Mad Maudlin re-imagined by AI (combination of three photos).
I was born the year before WWII ended, and have since led what many people seem to consider a varied and colorful life.
I can’t remember when friends first started telling me that I should write my memoirs, but in 2015, I began posting brief chapters of reminiscence each week as “Throwback Thursday” essays on Facebook.
Before long, readers started telling me that I should compile these essays into a book. While a nice idea, this was impractical because of the sheer number of photos, many in color, involved in over 200 (and counting) essays.
I next considered a website, but upon inquiry, discovered that setting one up would be a very expensive proposition, and I’d still have to do most of the work anyway.
Since I’ve long been familiar with the elements of the free online tool Blogger™, I decided to turn the memoir essays into linked sections, each containing 20 stories. (Apologies for any disparity in type size as a result of importing material from other sources)
These tales are not in any kind of autobiographical order. Many of them are about fascinating people I’ve known, including members of my family. Some are based on my own artwork. They're all just the tiniest bit outrageous.
Welcome to my past.
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1. SKETCHING THE WEST (KIND OF)
2. GOOGLING FOR TREASURE/GETTING THE BIRD
3. STRANGLEWOODS: A SOMEWHAT TWISTED TALE OF LOVE AND STRANGENESS
4. SHE LOVES YOU, Or,
A SIGN OF THE TIMES
5. SO HE USED CANNONS
6. WITCHY WOMEN TAKE OVER
7. CHARIOTS OF CHERUBIM CHANTING; OR, WHY I LOVE THIS VIDEO
8. SMILE, STANZI !
Or
A PHOTOGRAPHIC BOGGLE
9. THE CREATIVE PROCESS: A HOUSEHOLD HINT
10. THE MOST SURPRISING ADVENTURES OF LITTLE JACK
11. WHEN A PEST IS NOT A PEST:
SOME THOUGHTS ON OXALIS
12. THE OBJECT IN QUESTION #1: STEAMPUNK POTTY
13. REVISIONIST FAMILY HISTORY; Or,
A VERY ODD BROMANCE
14. RD#4: THE HOUSE THAT MORPHED
15. DAD’S FIRST ROAD TRIP; Or,
WE AREN’T HIGH HAT!
16. GRATITUDE: A MEMORY IN CALLIGRAPHY
17. OOPS! Or
YOUR TATTOO? YEAH, IT’S PROBABLY ALL MY FAULT
18. PIRATES BANNED BY THE BBC, Or,
SQUATTING 101: A GUY NAMED JOE
19. LORE OF THE GORE, Or,
THE QUEST FOR THE DRUID CROWN; A CAUTIONARY TALE
20. CONSIDER THE BIDET
1. THROWBACK THURSDAY: The US South, Southwest and West; Summer 1961
SKETCHING THE WEST (KIND OF)
In 1961, my family went on a six-week odyssey that’s enshrined in our history as “the Western Trip.”
We happened to hit Disneyland on July 4th, and almost had the place to ourselves because everybody else assumed it would be crowded. Then we visited San Francisco and Berkeley, where my Uncle Jim and his family were on a sabbatical from Cornell, and living in a house where Carl Jung had stayed on visits to the University. Then up the coast on Route 1, etc., etc.
It was quite the long haul, and then as now, I tended to crave a lot of “alone time”—hard to come by when traveling as a family pod.
My go-to tactic became wandering off and ensconcing myself behind my sketchbook, rendering my own unconventional take on the places we visited. (I should mention that at the time, I tended to draw a lot of cartoon mice.)
Recently, going through some stored memorabilia, I found a collection of musty sketchbooks, dating from 1959 to 1962. (I stopped drawing when I got to college and roomed with students doing “Serious Art.”)
Among the sketches were those I’d made on the Western Trip. About the same time, my brother, who was 11 in 1961, sent me a collection of my dad’s wonderful photos from that summer.
How could I not combine some of them?
(Note: Although Dad took some spectacular shots of scenery, I've mostly used human-interest pics here.)
Taking off in the Ford Fairlane
On a beach somewhere. I frequently attracted little kibitzers, so I drew these kids...
A whale in pajamas.
More kids. One of our most interesting stops was at Acoma (ACK-oh-ma), the oldest continuously inhabited town in North America, located on top of a high mesa in New Mexico. We happened to arrive on the occasion of a festival that included games on horseback.
These kids were teasing their little brother about falling off of his pony, so I memorialized the event.
My brother David (foreground), sister Sue and me at a roadside stop. I was clowning around about taking a jump. Sue was a blonde that summer.
This bear at Yosemite...
...inspired the above drawing.
...on the wildlife.
Four on the road: me my mother, brother David, Dad.
Somewhere in Texas
We thought this was a big tree until we hit the California redwoods.
At the Grand Tetons
Grand Canyon artist...
...and the product.
Sue meets a Sanitary Engineer.
Disneyland
Dad gets frisky at Knott's Berry Farm.
Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco
Little girl, Chinatown, San Francisco.
We split up toward the end of the trip; my dad having business at home, and I, needing to prepare for my stay as an exchange student in Germany, flew cross-country (my first time in an airplane), and my mother, Sue and David drove back to Pennsylvania.
Dad had wanted to give us a memorable trip. That he did.
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2. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Versailles, France, 1750; Sebastopol, California, 2010-Present
GOOGLING FOR TREASURE/GETTING THE BIRD
Back in 2010, I began volunteering at the wonderful Sutter Hospice Thrift Store in Sebastopol. Around here, when you admire a piece of clothing or jewelry, you might get the reply: “This? Oh, I got it at Hospice,” as if it were a brand name, like Target or Tiffany’s.
Light and airy for Halloween.
Located in a former department store in a shopping center, the Hospice store is light, airy, colorful and tasteful, a far cry from the musty jammed warehouses of my thrifting youth. Here's a look:
Basket Display
The small city of Sebastopol, in the heart of Sonoma County wine country, is a friendly, upwardly mobile and generous place. which explains why, seven days a week at 10:00 AM, a line of donation-crammed vehicles forms in the parking lot behind the Hospice store, and bags and boxes of potential items for sale pour into its back room. Although the official time-frame for this activity is listed as 10AM-1PM, donations are often cut off early, simply because there’s just nowhere else to put them.
I must say that volunteering at Sutter Hospice Thrift Store is a three-times rewarding activity: helping the community, retail therapy, and a lively social scene, with both the constant stream of customers and with a volunteer and managerial staff full of colorful (and competent) eccentrics.
Halloween in the back room.
I started out straightening clothing on racks, re-hanging dropped garments, and policing dressing rooms, and eventually migrated from cashiering to the ongoing treasure-hunt in the back room; this is where decisions are made as to which items are new, like-new, seasonal, valuable, relevant and/or otherwise special enough to go out onto the sales floor.
In the back room during Covid.
Unlike Goodwill Industries, Hospice doesn’t have space or facilities to repair and launder clothing and linens, so items with stains, musty or overly perfume-y odors, missing buttons, rips, split seams, etc., are saved for an organization that deals with these flaws and provides clothing for needy people in Ecuador. (On a smaller scale, facilitated by willing volunteers, some items go to local homeless shelters.)
“Who ever thought THAT was a good idea?”
And, more commonly,
“What the hell IS that?”
For years, we depended on our own experience and various types of personal volunteer expertise in fashion, jewelry, handbags, shoes, books, electronics, toys, artwork, ceramics, vintage objects, etc.
And for years, we received bits of feedback about objects purchased for a few dollars that turned out to be worth MUCH more. All we could do was shrug and return to the stream of donations pouring through.
Then somebody discovered Google Lens™, an app available free to anybody with Google on their phone. (I’m still surprised at how many people haven’t heard of it.)
Google Lens allows you to take a photo of an object, select settings like “Identify,” “Translate,” and “Shop,” and AI will respond with a photostream of the same or close-to identical objects, usually with prices shown; links to where they can be seen or purchased; and an automated opinion on what you’ve got there, like ANTIQUES ROADSHOW without having to wait in line.
Armed with this technology, more quickly than you might believe, we began discovering hidden treasures: commemorative T-shirts selling for $200 on Etsy or eBay; belt buckles made by famous silversmiths; high-priced antique dolls mingled with headless Barbies; pieces of Tiffany jewelry culled from baggies full of tangled costume junk.
We don’t, of course, charge anywhere near the actual value of these discoveries (we are, after all, a thrift store), but we can get a bit more than we'd ask for a run-of-the-mill item in our quest to help fund the county’s hospice services.
Of course, once I realized that this technology was available on my own phone, I went around my house Google-Lensing any interesting-looking object—I have many—and finding some surprising treasures.
Eventually I got around to a handsome engraving of a hawk-like bird that used to hang just inside our living-room door in the house where I grew up. My dad had acquired it at a farm auction in the late 1930s or early '40s; my mother later put it in a larger frame, and I eventually wound up with it.
To my astonishment, it turned out to be a relatively well-known piece of art, even found in the collections of a few museums, although, since it’s a single page from a 16-volume set, it’s not exorbitantly valued. (The entire set of volumes was sold by Sotheby’s for around $12,000.) This one seems to be one of the most popular of the illustrations and is treated as an art object in its own right.
Here’s the online description:
"'Le Milan Noir' is a hand-colored lithograph of the black kite, or MILVUS MIGRANS, from HISTOIRE NATURELLE DES OISEAUX edited by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, a French polymath and head of the royal botanical gardens under Louis XV.. The lithograph was engraved by French engineer, engraver and naturalist François-Nicolas Martinet and the volume was published in 1770.
"The book includes a description of the black kite and a hand-colored plate of the bird, a raptor that lives in tropical regions of Africa, Eurasia, and Australasia."
I didn’t want to try to take apart my mother’s framing, which is pretty much held together by duct tape and thumbtacks, but on checking the piece closely with a magnifying glass, I could see that it was rendered on a fine watercolor-type paper, and note the texture changes and small unevenness caused by the application of watercolors. Yes, our family "Black Kite" is not a print, but the real deal, a 275-year-old hand-colored engraving.
If you compare it with one that was auctioned off at Sotheby’s (see below), you can see small differences in the shading at the edges of the tail, the top of the wings, the throat, and the beak, as well as on the log on which the kite perches. The all-over difference in color saturation can be explained by the fact that the Sotheby’s bird still appears to be in the original book, while ours has been hanging around outside, guarding Hill doors for about 80 years.
The bird recently sold by Sotheby's is on the left; ours is on the right for comparison. My mother used a standard-sized mat, which cuts off the name of the bird—it's still there, hidden below the matting.
I have no plans to sell or exhibit "Le Milan Noir;" I just kind of like the idea that a museum piece hangs on the wall inside my doorway, well out of the sun’s rays, as it did in our family home all those years ago.
So here’s my advice: get yourself some Google Lens, and go on your own treasure hunt.
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3. STRANGLEWOODS: A SOMEWHAT TWISTED TALE OF LOVE AND STRANGENESS
When I was growing up on Mammy Morgan’s Hill, one of my favorite playgrounds was an 80-plus-acre swathe of pristine valley woodland belonging to our closest neighbors.
It contained everything an adventurous kid could want in a woods: a stream with actual waterfalls, in which one could move stones around to engineer wading pools; deer trails to follow; log bridges to navigate; jutting rocks where one could dig out hideouts and construct forts; even the occasional arrowhead to be found.
Me at about age 10 with a non-stranglewood fishing pole
Back then, my busy parents were refreshingly free of helicopter tendencies; as long as we kids showed up for meals, chores and family activities, we could pretty much go where we liked in the surrounding forests and fields.
One of my favorite sylvan activities in those days was hunting for “stranglewoods.” (I once heard a neighbor use the term, and have employed it ever since.) These living artifacts are created when young trees and vines such as bittersweet, wild grape, or honeysuckle compete for the same space, with the latter inevitably twining tightly around the former.
Note the vine scars on the mature tree.
In the mid-1970s, in my second year of creating the Renaissance Faire character of “Mad Maudlen,” I began to envision her, in her endlessly wandering state, as a pilgrim. And, as in illustrations of the period, I pictured her as carrying a staff.
I forget exactly how Maudlen’s first staff, a delicately flared and fluted length of sassafras wood, got from Pennsylvania to California, but it proved the perfect accessory, helping me to navigate barefoot over rough spots, and adding yet another subtle layer of strangeness to the character.
When I left to take a job on the east coast several years later, I passed the staff on to artist and sundial-meister Gino Schiavone, who had always admired it.
Gino wrote: "You stick in my memory."
In 1994, I received a request from the Faire promoters to re-create the role of Maudlen that fall, and was delighted to accept. On a visit to my parents in Pennsylvania during the summer, I mentioned to my dad, who, in his retirement years, had begun crafting unusual items from unusual pieces of wood, that I was in need of a new staff.
Dad, as it happened, had become as fascinated by stranglewoods as I was, and had even taken to creating his own, substituting lengths of clothesline for vines, and patiently waiting years for the results. He disappeared into his workshop and emerged with a five-foot-long six-twist length of oak that had grown considerably before losing the battle with a grapevine.
With Dad and his collection of twisted walking sticks in Pennsylvania.
We cleaned it up, trimmed and smoothed the ends, embedded a tiny pilgrim’s seashell into the top, and shipped it off to San Francisco. It and Maudlen navigated the Faire wonderfully.
Not long after that, an accident left me with a broken leg. During my recovery, when I still needed a cane to walk, I received another long thin parcel from Dad. He’d turned one of his manufactured stranglewoods into a sturdy walking stick, complete with leather strap, thumb-rest, and my name meticulously carved into the handle.
Sometimes love, like strangeness, comes with a twist.
Walking stick on the left, oaken staff on the right.
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4. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York; February, 1964
SHE LOVES YOU, Or,
A SIGN OF THE TIMES
(Although it was rambling, musty, and located in a particularly dicey area at the very edge of the campus, Sherbrooke was actually a step up from my freshman living unit, Washington Arms, an erstwhile fleabag hotel popularly referred to as “The Armpit.”)
The Armpit
Among the Sherbrooke residents were quite a few art students, distinguishable by their ever-present portfolios and tackle boxes full of art supplies, and their unconventional swoopy garments—the rest of us were trotting about meekly in pleated skirts, crewnecks, knee socks and penny loafers.
Arty types
One of the more swoopy of the art gang was a young woman named Sue, a free spirit and wild dresser with close-cropped brown hair topped with a blonde wig that, as she informed us, was called “Murgatroyd” when she was drunk, and “Elizabeth” when she was sober.This hairpiece almost seemed to have a social life of its own, as Sue was wont to leave it here and there all over campus, often to be returned to Sherbrooke by some male art student, fraternity lad or sports hero (Sue had wisely equipped Murgatroyd/Elizabeth with a discreet sewn-inside name-and-address tag.)
Sue was the first among us to sniff out the beginnings of Beatlemania, even before the Liverpudlians’ landmark appearance on THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW in February of ’64.
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| The boys |
She celebrated the Fab Four far and wide throughout the dorm, with posters on the walls, stickers on the windows, and the strains of “She Loves You” on repeat blasting from her open doorway.
If she thought you deserved it, you would be invited to join a select group in her room to listen to more obscure cuts like “Anna,” “Till There Was You,” and “Don’t Bother Me.”
The culmination of her devotional campaign was an event recorded by a photo in a local newspaper, with the following caption:
“’Beatlemania’ has hit the SU campus, and the British boys might be flattered to know that a dormitory has adopted their name. Residents of the former Sherbrooke Apartments at 950 Madison St. voted at a Sunday night house meeting, to call their living center ‘Beatle Brooke.’”
It didn’t last long, but oh Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.
I even had a quasi-Beatle haircut. (Photo by Chan Rudd)
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5. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Boston Massachusetts; July 4th, 1976
SO HE USED CANNONS
One of my all-time favorite Fourth-of-July moments came in 1976, with a PBS Bicentennial broadcast of Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra playing the heck out of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.”
They expected 25,000 people. They got a LOT more. In this rare video (the PBS coverage was better), there’s a warm-up with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” odd footage of an uneasy commentator who thinks he’s off-camera, and then the main event. (If you don’t want to sit through the beginning, the real fireworks start at about 15 minutes in.)
I’ll never forget it: full orchestra sawing and blowing and banging away; howitzers blasting from barges on the Charles River; churchbells ringing throughout the city of Boston; fireworks erupting, and 750,000 spectators on their feet screaming as if they were at a rock concert.
And in the middle of it, in his shirtsleeves but barely breaking a sweat, Maestro Arthur Fiedler, calmly conducting as all hell breaks loose.
Now THAT's a Fourth of July party.
6. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Sebastopol, CA, October 2022
WITCHY WOMEN TAKE OVER
A couple of Octobers ago, I decided to make a Halloween collage for a young friend. Pumpkins, I thought, some amusingly grinning pumpkins; a goofy ghost or two, a silly skeleton, black cats, the classic trope of a witch on a broomstick silhouetted against a full moon.
Things did not go as I expected.
Riffling through the delightful calendar put out annually by a local musical group known as the “Accordian Babes,” I was caught by the image of the sultry October Babe, draped provocatively along the bar of what appeared to be a Hell’s Angels hangout, complete with a snarling stuffed fox and several skull-and-crossbones insigniae.
Then I found a catalog from a ceramics company called Windstone, which, along with more benign images, featured frightful gargoyles and gryphons, leering owls, menacing wolves, and cat-like demons.
AUDUBON magazine yielded a life-sized bat, a tiny coiling serpent, and a crocodile skull. A Native American arts catalog displayed a ritual buffalo mask made (yikes!) from the flayed face of a once-living bison.
A disquieting theme was developing. I was hooked, but I had no idea of how to fit all these elements together until I began leafing through a calendar of Hindu deities.
Whoosh! There she was, Kali, arrayed in her traditional divine destructiveness, all dressed up and ready to party.
“Pumpkins, my ass!” she hissed.
I bought my young friend a sweet little Halloween card that year.
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7. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Northeastern US; 1975-2014
CHARIOTS OF CHERUBIM CHANTING
OR,
WHY I LOVE THIS VIDEO
In 1975, my friends John Roberts and Tony Barrand, a brilliant and beloved British-music duo, decided to try something a little different for the winter holiday season.
With John Roberts at the 1972 Dickens Fair
This was the winning formula:
• John Roberts – vocals, English concertina, Anglo concertina
• Tony Barrand – vocals, tambourine, percussion
• Fred Breunig – fiddle, harmony vocals
• Steve Woodruff – button accordion, Anglo concertina, pennywhistle, harmony vocals
The original lineup: Steve Woodruff, Tony Barrand, John Roberts, Fred Breunig
Their repertoire of winter songs was no mere lineup of predictable seasonal tunes, no “Frosty the Snowman” or “Jolly Holly Christmas.” These were music scholars who went hunting for, and found, a captivating and unpredictable collection of winter songs and carols, some ancient, some contemporary, some religious, some secular, some downright pagan, and many of them, according to one review, “carols you can dance to.”
(Scholarly note: this makes sense, as many of them were adapted from dance tunes in medieval times after repression by the Church was lifted.)
Check out this lineup from their 2013 album BIDDING YOU JOY:
1. "Bidding You Joy" (Alison Burns)– 1:08
2. "Masters in This Hall" (William Morris) – 4:30
3. "Awake! Behold!" – 4:10
4. "The Old Hark Hark" – 2:46
5. "I Saw a Ship" (Addington, A. Burns) – 3:23
6. "Cold December" – 4:05
7. "Mummers Night in Oshawa" (A. Frank Willis)– 4:08
8. "Apple Tree Wassail" – 3:16
9. "New Zadoc (While Shepherds Watched)" – 3:39
10. "O the Holy Holly" – 4:52
11. "O Bethlehem" – 3:21
12. "The Worcestershire Carol" – 3:21
13. "Penny for the Ploughboys" (Colin Cater) – 4:51
14. "Stay and I'll Sing!" – 4:24
15. "The Derby Ram Goes to Sea" – 3:44
16. "The Door of the Year" (A. Burns) – 3:07
17. "Villagers All" (Andy Davis) – 3:19
The four guys had so much fun in that 1975 holiday season that they went on to re-convene each winter for nearly 40 years, record six CDs, publish a songbook, and appear each winter in churches, coffeehouses, pubs, living rooms, small theaters and grand concert halls, even in New York’s Kennedy Center.
In mummer's motley: John, Fred, Tony, and Andy
At one point they began to introduce “mummers' plays,” a tradition that’s been traced as far back as the 11th century, rowdy ritual performances with a cast of stock characters, often performed by roving troupes of masked men or “guisers,” (as in “disguise,” and yes, that’s where we got the term “geezer” for an old guy).
St. George slays the dragon in a British mummers' play, as Old Father Christmas looks on.
One of NSWC’s favorite “party pieces” was “Chariots,” a remarkable carol composed in 1995 by singer John Kirkpatrick, but somehow seeming much older.
Simultaneously stirring and humorous, rollicking and reverent, the song was first recorded on their 2000 CD JUST SAY NOWELL, and became the group’s ultimate holiday sing-along.
There are a number of videos of “Chariots” online, some by noted choral groups, but my favorite will always be the one below, recorded in 2008 at the Latchis Theater in Brattleboro Vermont, with the audience happily stomping and bellowing along with that chorus-you-can’t-get-out-of-your-head.
This “Anthem of Alliteration,” at the hands of these wonderful musicians, accompanied by fiddle, accordian, concertina, and drum, becomes a joyous carnival oom-pah of a song. Here it is, and below are the words, in case you want to sing along.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzhv7sqUGCI ("Chariots"/Nowell Sing We Clear/Stachis Theater; Brattleboro, VT/2008)
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CHARIOTS
O Shepherd O shepherd come leave off your piping
Come listen come learn come hear what I say
For now is the time that has long been forespoken
For now is the time there′ll be new tunes to play
For soon there comes one who brings a new music
Of sweetness and clarity none can compare
So open your heart for heavenly harmony
Here on this hill will be filling the air
(Chorus) With chariots of cherubim chanting
And seraphim singing hosanna
And a choir of archangels a-caroling come
Hallelujah Hallelu
All the angels a-trumpeting glory
In praise of the Prince of Peace
See on yon stable the starlight is shimmering
And glimmering and glistening and glowing with glee
In Bethlehem blest this baby of bliss will be
Born here before you as bold as can be
And you'll be the first to hear the new symphony
Songs full of gladness and glory and light
So learn your tunes well and play your pipes proudly
For the Prince of Paradise plays here tonight
(Chorus)
Bring your sheep bleating to this happy meeting
To hear how the lamb with the lion shall lie
It′s mooing and braying you'll hear the song saying
The humble and lowly will be the most high
Let the horn of the herdsman be heard up in heaven
For the gates are flung open for all who come near
And the simplest of souls shall sing to infinity
Lift up and listen and you shall hear
(Chorus)
The warmonger's charger will thunder for freedom
The gun-maker′s furnace will dwindle and die
And muskets and sabers and swords shall be sundered
Surrendered to the sound that is sweeping the sky
And the shoes of the mighty shall dance to new measures
And the jackboots of generals shall jangle no more
As sister and brother and father and mother
Agree with each other the end to all war
(Chorus) (Chorus)
As a candle can conquer the demons of darkness
As a flame can keep frost from the deepest of cold
So a song can give hope in the depths of all danger
And a line of pure melody soar in your soul
So sing your songs well and sing your songs sweetly
And swear that your singing it never shall cease
So the clatter of battle and drums of disaster
Be drowned in the sound of the pipes of peace
(Chorus)
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The group’s last performance in its original form was in 2014; slowed by advancing age and/or illness. Tony performed those last years from a wheelchair, his voice clear and true to the last note.
John and Tony are both, to my sorrow, gone now, but Fred and Andy carry on the winter-caroling tradition with a group of other fine musicians that includes the group Windborne, of which Fred’s daughter Lauren is a member.
Here’s a short video (3:01) that gives a great mini-tour of the unusual kinds of songs performed by Nowell Sing We Clear:
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Wikipedia Nowell Sing We Clear Discography
• NOWELL SING WE CLEAR (1977)
• TO WELCOME IN THE SPRING (1980)
• THE SECOND NOWELL (1981)
• NOWELL SING WE CLEAR, Vol. 3 (1985)
• NOWELL SING WE FOUR (1988)
• THE BEST OF NOWELL SING WE CLEAR 1975–1986 (1989)
• HAIL SMILING MORN! (1995)
• JUST SAY NOWELL (2000)
• NOWELL NOWELL NOWELL! (2008)
• BIDDING YOU JOY (2013)
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8. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mannheim, Germany; Vienna, Austria; 1756-1840
SMILE, STANZI !
Or
A PHOTOGRAPHIC BOGGLE
What impressions (other than his music) does the name Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart conjure up for you? Satin knee-breeches and elaborate wigs? Extravagantly hooped skirts and elegantly embroidered brocades? Harpsichords, minuets, court intrigues and Imperial patronage?
Mozart was born in 1756, 20 years before the American Revolution, and died a mere 35 years later, leaving behind, as we all know, an extraordinary body of musical composition. He also left behind a mountain of debt, two of his six children (four had died in infancy), and his 29-year-old widow, Constanze.
Wolfgang and Stanzi
Theirs had been a loving, tumultuous, faithful, and (famously) often erotic marriage. Mozart’s “Stanzi” came from a hard-working and essentially middle-class musical family, the Webers of Mannheim, Germany, then an important cultural, intellectual and musical center.
The 21-year-old Mozart visited Mannheim in 1777, developed a close relationship with the Weber family, and fell in love—not with 15-year-old Constanze Weber, but with her older sister Aloysia, a talented singer, who ultimately rejected him.
By 1781, the Weber family had moved to Vienna, and took Mozart in as a boarder, whereupon he began to court Constanze. Her father had recently died, and her mother thoroughly disapproved of the match (as did Mozart’s dad, Leopold), but the young couple thwarted their parents by simply moving in together. To avoid scandal, they were married in August of 1782.
Surviving letters from Mozart to and about Constanze reveal that, far from being the giggling airhead portrayed in the film AMADEUS, she was very much involved in her husband’s musical process, acting as a performer, muse, and manager. As a trained singer, she appeared in his concerts—including the premiere of his MASS IN C MINOR—organized his papers, and fostered his interest in Baroque music.
In Amadeus, played by Elizabeth Berridge
Mozart died from some form of acute infection in 1791. He was not, as is often maintained, buried in a “pauper’s grave” —The custom in Vienna at that time was that only aristocrats got to lie in solo graves topped with monuments; "ordinary" corpses were simply bundled together into unmarked mass pits.
He also didn’t die a pauper—he was actually in Vienna’s top 5% of earners—but was seriously financially irresponsible. He loved to live large and generously, took out loans and then forgot about them, and was apparently too busy having fun and composing immortal music to keep track of income and expenditure.
After his death, faced with Wolfgang’s tangle of debts and sloppy bookkeeping skills (which were as minimal as his music was transcendent), Constanze fluffed up her big-girl petticoats (no panties then), rolled up her sleeves, and got to work dealing with his loopy finances.
She quickly developed into an acute businesswoman, managing her late spouse’s debts; selling his manuscripts to publishers for profit; organizing and producing memorial concerts (in which she frequently performed); securing a pension from Emperor Leopold II; co-writing the first Mozart biography; and essentially turning her husband’s genius into a lucrative ongoing brand.
So, you might ask, why am I rattling on about Constanze Mozart? Well, not long ago, I happened upon one of those marvelous YouTube videos that use AI to bring old photos to life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei5awzOgUfE (The Oldest Photographs in History — Brought to Life | Real Faces from the 1830s & 1840s)
And there, at about 10:03, was a surprisingly informal group photo of seven people. Described as having been taken in 1840, its subjects are (as noted in WIKIPEDIA):
Distinguished Bavarian composer Max Keller, seated front and center between two women. The younger folks in the back row are identified as his family cook, brother-in-law and two daughters. On the lower right in the photo is Keller’s wife, Josefa. On the left is a woman identified as…
Whaaaaat?
…Constanze Mozart.
Mozart’s wife lived long enough to be PHOTOGRAPHED?
My mind was officially boggled.
I should mention that there’s a lot of controversy about this image, with various experts weighing in as to whether this sober matron was, in fact, Mozart’s “Stanzi.”
The truth is, however, that, if not Stanzi, it jolly well could have been, as Constanze Mozart Nissen—she married a Danish diplomat in 1809—was at that point very much alive; she would pass on in 1842 at the age of 92.
In 1859, American poet, essayist, and medical professor Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. described the camera as "the mirror with a memory." We have no photos of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who achieved immortality without benefit of photography.
I like to think, however, that this image links his time to ours, and that a little mind-boggling, like great music, is good for the soul.
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9. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Occidental, California, 1990s
THE CREATIVE PROCESS: A HOUSEHOLD HINT
When I first made this drawing in the early 1990s, there was no story behind it, just a vague image that slipped into my mind.
But of course there’s always a story.
Some years later, a friend was going through my portfolio of drawings, and found this one. “This looks like an illustration for a fairytale or folktale” he observed, “but I can’t remember which one.”
I couldn’t resist. On the spot I invented “The Smirchcrow,” a clumsy bird who blunders between dimensions, using clean laundry as portals from one to the next.
“I never heard of that one,” he said, “Where does it come from?” Then he caught on: “You made it up!” he accused.
Of course I did.
A few years later, I came upon the drawing again. This time the story came out as a set of verses:
Ladies, in your launderings
Beware the SMIRCHCROW’s wanderings,
From outer space to linens fine
That hang upon your washing-line,
For sometimes, blundering through the dark
He’ll lose his way and leave his mark
Of stardust tangled in his wings
With shards of planetary rings
And other starry stuff that clings
Onto your sheets and underthings,
(My verse this timely warning brings:
Beware the Smirchcrow’s wanderings.)
Hint #2: To deter him, try a little bleach; he hates that.
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10. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Easton, Pennsylvania, 1958-1960s; Hollywood, California, 1981-Present
THE MOST SURPRISING ADVENTURES OF LITTLE JACK
As a family, the Colemans were not only numerous, but a patrician force to be reckoned with: direct descendants of Benjamin Franklin, with a Pulitzer Prize-winning grandfather.
There was eminent historian and distinguished Lafayette College professor Dr. John MacDonald Coleman; his aristocratic Katherine Hepburn-like mover-and-shaker wife Agnes; and their seven children, four girls and three boys—each more beautiful and brilliant than the next—with whom I attended Sunday-school classes, ballet classes, birthday parties, etc.
Around 1962, I was talked into being an assistant teacher in the little-kid version of Vacation Bible School, a kind of churchly daycare for three-to-five-year-olds. My role consisted primarily of reading sanitized Bible stories, making dioramas, and keeping the adorable tykes from pelting each other with Play-doh.
Me in those days
One of those attending was the youngest Coleman, little Jack. Tow-headed, button-cute and whip-smart, Jack actually listened to the Bible stories, asked penetrating and precocious questions, and especially relished those incidents involving miraculous transformations (wine into water, burning bushes, raising the dead) and adventures/heroics (David and Goliath, Joshua at Jericho, The Flight from Egypt).
After that summer, I went away to college and other lives, and seldom watched TV, missing entire small-screen eras—roughly from “The Brady Bunch” through “The Sopranos.”
On one visit home, I overheard hear my mother’s friends discussing the fact that little Jack had gone into acting and was on television. There was an odd tone to their remarks, later explained when I learned that, from 1982-88, he played Steven Carrington, one of TV’s very first openly gay characters, on “Dynasty.”
Oh, yum. Jack as Steven Carrington on Dynasty
Then, around 2008, while briefly sidelined at home with Netflix Streaming, I discovered entire seasons of cultish must-watch shows like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Lost,” and a quirky and innovative comic-book spinoff called “Heroes,” about ordinary people who became possessed of superpowers.
As I watched it, I realized that one of the actors, a good-looking fellow whose performance walked a brilliant and subtle line between sympathetic and downright evil, seemed oddly familiar.
When I saw the name in the credits, I realized that the guy whose face, voice and expressions I was remembering (though not the evil aspect) was Dr. John Coleman (1918-1998), who, like this protean character, Noah Bennett, was graceful, brilliant, charmingly off-center and wore somewhat geeky glasses.
Dr. John MacDonald Coleman at Left, in his seventies, and Jack as Noah Bennett in "Heroes." "HRG" is an alternate name for Noah in the series (someone obviously couldn't tell just-plain-geeky glasses from horn-rims). Dr. John is rocking the real thing.
Good Lord! (I realized) It was Little Jack, consciously or unconsciously channeling aspects of his dad into his TV role. (His acting genes actually came from both parents, who frequently took leading parts in faculty plays at Lafayette College.)
“Heroes” continued for four seasons (2006-2010), and a mini-series, “Heroes Reborn,” aired in 2015. Beginning with his 1981 debut in “Days of Our Lives,” Jack Coleman has gone on to become one of the most quietly successful and hardest-working small-screen actors in the business.
He has appeared in or starred in over 60 TV shows and movies, including “Touched By An Angel,” “Diagnosis Murder,” “House MD,” “Nip/Tuck,” “Entourage,” “Scandal,” “CSI,” “Criminal Minds,” “Nightmare Café,” “Ultimate Spider-Man,” “The Mentalist,” “Rock the House,” “Castle,” “Vampire Diaries,” and many more.
Heroics: check.
Adventures: check.
Miraculous transformations: check.
I like to think that little Jack is in his element.
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11. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Multiple Gardens; c. 1950-Present
WHEN A PEST IS NOT A PEST:
SOME THOUGHTS ON OXALIS
I’ve worked in family food gardens; large demonstration gardens; private showplace gardens; sprawling container gardens; and backyard gardens from large to tiny.
Throughout my years here, I’ve labored under a small cognitive dissonance. When I first arrived in Sonoma County in its glorious springtime, I was enchanted by roadside billows of intensely green shamrock-like leaves crowned with waves of brilliant yellow five-lobed trumpet-like flowers.
Oxalis stricta
I soon learned, however, from experienced friends, that introducing this beauty into a garden would be the beginning of a horticultural nightmare.
Although Oxalis stricta, known as yellow oxalis or wood sorrel, is (unlike its truly nasty mat-rooted garden-pest relative, the creeping Oxalis corniculata) shallow-rooted and easily pulled up, it seeds prolifically and gently insinuates itself EVERYWHERE. I thus have spent many hours yanking this pretty invader out on sight, waging a silent stubborn war against its proliferation.
The nasty Oxalis corniculata.
Last year, however, I moved to a semi-rural property with wide-open spaces that, because of an uncontrollable gopher population, are allowed to grow into flourishing meadows of wild grasses, cresses, clovers, cranesbills—and, yes, yellow oxalis.
My gardening endeavors have dwindled to a tidy little collection of container plants on a deck well out of gopher range, and I rejoice that I can finally cherish the lovely blooms of oxalis without feeling the unwilling primal urge to yank them out by the roots.
Free-range Oxalis
It’s the little things.
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12. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Sonoma County, California; 2015
THE OBJECT IN QUESTION #1: STEAMPUNK POTTY
My friend Ed, aside from his job as a medical professional, is a whiz at designing and building stuff (he’s currently constructing a new home for his family—by hand).
About a decade ago, his eldest son (to prevent future embarrassment, I’ll call him “B.”) was at the age usually deemed appropriate for toilet training, but seemed totally uninterested in the concept.
Not wanting to traumatize the lad, Ed approached the situation from a different direction: “What if I build you your own potty?”
B. showed distinct approval of this plan, so Ed asked him to describe his ideal potty. The boy, who was of a mechanical bent even at that early age, had recently become fascinated with the workings of their on-demand water heater, and he had no trouble coming up with the following desired features:
• Vents
• Gears
• Lights
• On/off Switch
• Outlet
• Smokestack
• Pipes
• Meters
“My goodness,” thought Ed, “I think my kid wants a Steampunk potty."
He got to work, despite a broken arm, and produced the masterpiece pictured here.
I must report, however, that although B. did eventually get toilet trained, it was not through use of the iconic potty, which he preferred to admire from a respectful distance.
13. AN AMBITIOUS THROWBACK THURSDAY: London, England; Leicestershire, England; and Dublin, Ireland; 18th Century; Sebastopol, California 2019-2025
REVISIONIST FAMILY HISTORY
Or,
A VERY ODD BROMANCE
For some time now, I’ve been a fan of the brilliant podcast REVISIONIST HISTORY, in which zeitgeister Malcolm Gladwell investigates “overlooked and misunderstood” events of past history in the light of hindsight.
Little did I know, when I wrote the Throwback Thursday below years ago, that it would provide an opportunity for me to create a Revisionist History episode of my very own.
This all started a few weeks ago, when I happened upon a library book called EVERY VALLEY: THE DESPARATE LIVES AND TROUBLED TIMES THAT MADE HANDEL’S MESSIAH, by Charles King.
(Incidentally, there’s actually no such word as “desparate.” I assume it’s an intentional portmanteau word combining “desperate”— meaning hopeless— and “disparate,” meaning things not related to each other. Both are oddly apt here.)
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So, here’s the original TBT:
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A MUSICAL OFFERING, Or,
WHAT MY 7X GREAT-UNCLE CHARLES AND HIS GOOD FRIEND GEORGE GOT UP TO IN THE SUMMERHOUSE
Once upon a time, long before my 8X great-grandfather William Jennings arrived in the Virginia Colony (around 1690) as a captain in the British Army, my paternal grandmother's ancestors had become, to put it politely, stinking rich.
The family fortune, dating from the 16th century, was derived from the iron trade, and G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-Granddad William was the 10th child of 13 sired by Humphrey Jennings, Esq., who loved to invest in property, at the height of his career owning 17 towns and other properties in Warwickshire and Leicestershire. Yeah, rich.
Although 8XG-Dad William made out OK in Humphrey’s will, it was William’s oldest brother Charles who (as was usual in those times) got most of the land and loot, including a fine country house called Gopsall Hall in northwest Leicestershire.
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| An engraving of Gopsall Hall in its prime. The temple to John Holdsworth (of which more later) is at left. |
In the fullness of time, the now-very-wealthy Charles Jennens (the spelling he preferred) and his wife Mary Cary Jennens had a son, also called Charles.
Along with having inherited the family flair for making and keeping money, the younger Charles was a bachelor gentleman scholar who loved to dress well (check out all that elegantly frogged green velvet in the portrait below), and hang with writers, artists and musicians.
He also picked up a bit of a reputation as a writer and librettist, not to mention the nickname “Soleyman the Magnificent,” for his expensive lifestyle at Gopsall Hall, which he had rebuilt in grand style in the late 1740s.
Among other extravagances, Charles Jennings commissioned a fancy summerhouse on the grounds of the Hall, and had a full-sized pipe organ installed in it for the use of his good friend George, another confirmed bachelor who liked to dress well.
One day in July of 1741, Charles gave George a new libretto for an oratorio.
"Thanks," said George," This looks good; I'll put some music to it."
The resulting collaboration debuted at an Easter charity event in Dublin on April 13th, 1742. Although its initial reception was so-so, this piece generated some good buzz (especially that catchy chorus), and has survived to this day.
Gopsall Hall (now Gopsall Park Farm) currently belongs to the British Crown.
The portraits of Charles and George below, both by Thomas Hudson, belong to the Handel House Collections Trust.
Handel, painted by Thomas Hudson in 1756.
Charles Jennens, painted by Thomas Hudson in 1745.
Their MESSIAH belongs to the ages
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THE REVISIONS
1. A DIFFICULT CENTURY
So here’s where the revising and amplifying starts. It helps to remember that all this took place in the 18th century, in times at least as extreme and troubled as our own.
I’m talking about, among other dire events: the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714); the Seven Years' War (1756–1763); the American Revolution (1775–1783); the French Revolution (1792–1802): a major financial crisis known as the “South Sea Bubble” (1720): the beginnings of the agricultural and Industrial revolutions; and the bloody Jacobite Rebellions (1715 and 1745), that followed the transfer of the throne of England to the Hanoverian Dynasty (1714).
This was also a century of raging slave trade (which, ironically, flourished side by side with an intellectual movement known as the “Enlightenment”); the rise of the Abolitionist movement; the experiments of Sir Isaac Newton; and the writings of John Locke, Alexander Pope, and Jonathan Swift, not to mention famines, pestilences, cockfights, bear-baiting and Italian opera.
And, of course, the music of Handel.
Portrait bust of Georg Frideric Handel by Louis-Francois Roubillac
2. WHO’S YOUR GRANDPA?
THE FIRST REVISION to the original TBT above is the family relationship, here “untangled” by AI, and still pretty confusing:
[My 8X great-grandad] William Henry Jennings (1676–1775) was the paternal uncle of librettist Charles Jennens (1700-1773), and was the brother of the librettist’s father, Charles Jennens Sr. (1662-1747).
AI sez:
You are your 8X great-grandfather's nephew's first cousin, once removed. This is because his nephew is your distant great-great-uncle, making you first cousins, but then with a difference of one generation.
Well, I’m glad we cleared THAT up.
3. THE ORGAN IN THE SUMMERHOUSE
It’s a long-standing online tale, but turns out to be more like an urban (or rural) legend. Charles did have a pipe organ constructed to Handel’s specifications, but it was part of an enormous renovation of Gopsall Hall (in the then-trendy Palladian style) In 1747.
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| Letter from Handel to Charles Jennens, describing in minute detail the specifications for the Gopsall Hall pipe organ. |
That was the year that Charles Sr. passed on and Charles Jr., already wealthy in his own right, inherited the legendary Jennings fortune. It was also a year after the death of one of Charles’ few close and dear friends, the poet and classical scholar Edward Holdsworth (1684–1746).
As part of the renovation process, Charles decided to construct a grand classical temple in honor of his friend. This imposing edifice, located some distance from the house, collapsed in 1835 as a result of exposure and neglect, its ornate carvings and statuary long since carried off to museums and private collections.
“Over the years,” writes historian King, “[the temple ruins] became so much of a local landmark that a legend grew up around their most famous association.
The ruins of the temple Charles erected to his friend Edward Holdsworth.
“Today, a fading tourist placard gets its history spectacularly, exquisitely wrong: ‘George Frideric Handel is said to have closeted himself inside the Temple for 3 weeks in August/September 1741 to write his masterpiece “The Messiah.’”
Not.
He composed it in his house in London.
4. OF BROS AND MAGGOTS
Firstly, there’s no question that Charles Jennens was a total Handel fanboy.
Portrait of Charles Jennens by Giles Hussey
red chalk, 1760s.
red chalk, 1760s.
GFH first traveled to London from Germany in late 1710, for the production of his opera RINALDO. Following its great success, he returned to his role as kapellmeister (musical director/composer) to George Louis, then Elector of Hanover.
Two years later, George Louis, unexpectedly and through a series of genealogical shenanigans, became George I of England.
King George I of England, formerly Elector of Hanover.
Handel settled permanently in England in 1712, and became a naturalized British citizen in 1727. He wrote and produced operas in the Italian style and held various royal commissions, such as those that resulted in his “Water Music” and “Fireworks Music,” as part of spectacles designed to establish the new monarch in the eyes of the populace.
Charles, like many others, was blown away by Handel’s genius. Unlike many superfans, however, he had an actual means of getting close to his new idol: money.
Handel was an immense talent who always seemed to be in need of cash for his lavish opera productions. Charles had not only an immense fortune, but, as it turned out, a flair for assembling quotations from scripture and poetry to create oratorios, which, being sung from a stage without costumes or scenery, were a lot cheaper to produce.
Beginning in 1725 with the opera RODELINDA, Charles began financing the publication of Handel’s musical scores as they appeared. Then, around 1735, he sent his musical crush his own libretto for an oratorio called “Saul.”
Charles was in his early 30s and Handel in his late 40s when they likely first met in person, sometime around the late 1730s, to collaborate on the production of “Saul."
They would go on to work together, probably on “Israel in Egypt” (1738–39), and certainly on “L'Allegro, il Penseroso et il Moderato” (1740–41); “Messiah” (1741–42); and “Belshazzar” (1744–45).
The two men developed what historian King describes as a "continuous but contentious friendship." Fanboy or no, Charles was downright persnickety about the use of his texts. By all reports, he often snippily intervened in the composition process, scribbling changes directly onto Handel's manuscripts and complaining about the "maggots" (twiddley improvisations and/or misplaced phrases) he saw in them.
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| Handel's composing style, as seen in this page from the MESSIAH. |
He wrote to a friend: "I shall show you a collection I gave Handel, called ‘Messiah,’ which I value highly. He has made a fine entertainment of it, though not near so good as he might and ought to have done. I have with great difficulty made him correct some of the grossest faults in the composition; but he retained his overture obstinately, in which there are some passages far unworthy of Handel, but much more unworthy of the ‘Messiah.’”
Far from resenting this interference, Handel's willingness to restore the "Hallelujah" chorus to its original position in the “Messiah,” and to make other suggested improvements in his work, shows he valued Charles's input, even when it was not-so-adoring. Their long connection went well above and beyond an artist’s mere flattering of a wealthy patron.
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| I'd love to see this on a T-shirt. |
After the “Messiah”'s first performance in Dublin in 1742, Handel referred to it in a letter to Charles as "your oratorio Messiah," and conveyed respect for the text and for Charles’ contribution. They would continue this odd-couple friendship for the rest of their lives. Neither married, nor was known to engage in relationships with women.
Historians opine (according to AI) that the intensely sociable Handel was probably gay, though deeply closeted, since homosexuality was punishable by death in that era.
Charles Jennens, on the other hand, was most probably not homosexual, just misanthropic and misogynistic, except, apparently, with certain artists and scholars whom he hosted at Gospall Hall.
(And one can only imagine his reaction had he known that a distant relative would be publicly discussing his sexuality three centuries later.)
Handel died in 1759, aged 74, obese, near-blind, and mourned throughout Europe. Charles, though profoundly saddened and unsettled by the loss of his friend and collaborator, continued his literary and artistic pursuits, preparing critical editions of Shakespeare's plays, developing extensive collections of rare music manuscripts and paintings by old masters, and making changes and additions to his beloved Gopsall Hall.
5. THE TRAGEDY OF GOPSALL HALL
Gopsall Hall in the 20th century.
After Charles’s death in 1773 at age 73, the Hall went to a grand-nephew, and got passed down in the Curzon family from owner to noble owner.
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| A turn-of-the-century gathering at Gopsall Hall to celebrate the coming of age of one of the Lords Curzon. |
In the following centuries, it housed distinguished guests, such as Queen Adelaide (1772-1849; King William IV’s widow); King Edward VII (1831-1910); Queen Alexandra (1844-1925); Kaiser Wilhelm II (1849-1941); and Winston Churchill (1874-1965).
Eventually, however, the estate and Hall, being ruinously expensive to maintain, fell upon hard times. In 1919, the 4th Earl Howe sold it to a wealthy businessman, Baron Waring, who disposed of it it piecemeal to the Crown Estate (the property-holding branch of the British Monarchy) between 1927 and 1932.
The Hall in decline.
Gopsall Hall was never to be a stately home again; it was shut up until the Second World War when it became the No. 1 Radio Mechanics School of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) who used the house and estate as an experimental radar base from 1942 until 1945.
In 1951, the Hall was demolished in an ill-conceived wave of postwar destruction of declining mansions, and the site is now used as a glamping site and RV storage park. Handel's pipe organ found a home in a nearby church, and Jennings' art and music manuscripts had long since been dispersed to museums and private collections.
Glamping site at Gopsall Park.
This destruction of a building that dated (the original structure) back to th 11th century ("Gopsall" is Anglo-Saxon for "Hill of the Servants") and William the Conquerer’s “Domesday Book” was later termed “a tragedy” by historians and architectural scholars.
It's probably a good thing for all those glampers, however, that Charles is buried in the Jennings family vault 15 miles away in the next county. Otherwise, they might have to contend with one VERY grumpy ghost.
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14. New THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania; 1835-Present
RD#4: THE HOUSE THAT MORPHED
My Pennsylvania childhood home was an ever-changing entity.
The first part of it was constructed in 1835, essentially a stone box made of rocks pried out of the surrounding fields, which meant that their size ranged from baseball to foot-locker. With 18-inch-thick walls and a pitched roof, it was sunk into a hillside for warmth and for accessibility to the nearby dirt road.
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| The house in the early 2000s. The "stone box" section is on the right. |
The interior of the stone box as it appeared in a wide-angle brochure photo. The beams and ceiling are the originals. My dad laid the pegged floors, and built the fireplace and the cabinet at left.
A more realistic view, with my mother on the woodbox/windowseat and my brother David at right.
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| The original floor above, once my bedroom. There was a knothole I could remove and spy on people in the living room below. |
The house was located just off of the Old Philadelphia Road in Williams Township, Northampton County. This primitive highway was part of the historic early-American infrastructure designed to connect the port of Philadelphia with the state’s interior. Essential for commerce, mail, and travel, especially before the rise of railroads in the 19th century, the road served as a critical route for early settlers moving north from Philadelphia.
My parents c. 1941, with my sister Sue in a buggy and the house coated in whitewash.
And without moving an inch, that house changed addresses at least six times.
At first, it was probably just known as “So-and So’s Place.” No need for a mailing address, as the post was delivered by stagecoach and probably picked up at the coaching inn down the road.
By the time I was a small child in the 1940s, if asked my address, I would reply promptly: “First lane to the left past the Blue Church, Old Philadelphia Road, Williams Township, Pennsylvania.”
Early in the 1950s, this cumbersome, if picturesque, jumble was organized into “RD (Rural Delivery) #4, Easton, PA.” (Easton, four miles away, was the closest municipality with a post office.)
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| Dad pulling vines from stonework in the 1950s. |
A few years later, the house acquired a mailbox number, becoming “RD#4-255,” and in 1963, a zipcode, 18042.
Sometime in the 1970s, the name of our elevated stretch of Old Philadelphia Road, long known locally as “Mammy Morgan's Hill,” was officially changed to “Morgan Hill Road” in honor of Elizabeth Bell “ Mammy” Morgan (c.1759-1839), a strong-minded widow, community leader, and benefactor who operated a tavern on the hill, supplied legal and medical advice and care to local residents, and had the area’s first school built on land she donated.
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| The house c. 1950, with Halloween party and me at right front in the bonnet. |
With the name change, house numbers appeared for the first time, and the new and final address became “2155 Morgan Hill Road.”
Meanwhile, the house itself was also in a constant state of change. At some point, the stone box had been extended into two upstairs bedrooms and a bathroom, over a downstairs room that we called “the junkroom,” until my dad constructed knotty pine shelves, a desk, and a built-in piano that closed to make a buffet, thus creating a library/music room/dining room.
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| From left: the Brooder House, the 1960s extension, the kitchen/porch extension (front). The early 20th-century extension (rear), and the stone box. |
Sometime before 1940, a good-sized kitchen and a roomy porch had been added onto the south side of the house. Less fortunately, the owners had decided to cover the stonework with a coat of whitewash and a layer of tar-paper shingles.
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| The kitchen wing and porch. |
During our tenure, the changes to the structure came thick and fast: shingle-removal, stone pointing (scraping out and replacing decayed oyster-shell mortar); a slate roof; painting, plastering and wallpaper; dormer windows; shutters; two new chimneys; a rustic fireplace; pegged hardwood floors; a basement walk-in freezer and cold-storage room.
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| The former "junkroom" The buffet section at right was first a built-in piano, as seen below. |
In the 1960s, an entirely new wing was designed and constructed by an architect friend for my parents’ bedroom over a downstairs “recreation room” (big in those days). Then came a second bathroom; two patios; a greenhouse; and a breezeway leading to Dad’s workshop in the old “brooder house,” once used to shelter young animals in cold weather.
The surroundings also got an upgrade: from a messy tangle of weeds and brush emerged sweeping lawns, gardens, and new tree groves. A spring-fed elderberry bog became a pond; two derelict collapsed barns became a stable, garage, and rental apartment.
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| View from the porch to the pond, with elderberry bog at right. |
My dad, the guy mostly responsible for all this transformation (with us kids often serving as assistants), decided at some point that it deserved an estate-like title. Over the years, he tried in vain to introduce tony names like “Hillcroft,” “Hill’s Valley,” and “Hill’s Acres,” which were roundly ignored by everyone, including his family. Finally, he resigned himself to referring to the property as we all did, and still do, simply as “RD#4.”
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| With sister Sue (L) and brother David at RD#4. |
RD#4 was sold to the neighbors about 25 years ago (all three of us kids were happily settled in other parts of the country); they maintain it as a fancy rental, which explains some of the staged photos below.
It was a marvelous place to grow up amid the nature and mechanics of change.
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15. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania to Booneville Arkansas; June, 1931
DAD’S FIRST ROAD TRIP,
Or,
WE AREN’T HIGH HAT!
Although he would have dearly loved to go home to Arkansas for a summer visit, this was the depths of the Great Depression; he was a scholarship student; and he just couldn’t afford a train or bus ticket.
They weren't High Hat.
As he sat on the front steps of his living quarters, quietly resigning himself to not seeing his family any time soon, he was accosted by another student, a muscularly cheerful guy named John Evans.
“Hey,” said John, “I heard you were wanting to go south. Me too—my folks are in Texas. What do you say we buy a car and drive there?”
Dad, being 19 years old, readily agreed to this plan. Since they had very little cash between them, the two lads began scouring nearby used-car lots for bargains. These were few until they happened on a place that appeared to deal in abused cars. They wandered around and kicked tires, and decided the most likely candidate was a 1925 Model-T Ford.
Which didn’t run.
The dealer, seizing his chance, offered to charge them $15 for it, get it running and throw in a free tire, on the condition that they never, ever bring it back.
Since the two boys were underage, and the college “in loco parentis,” they needed to get permission from the dean of students.
This august gentleman eventually gave them his blessing on the condition that they send him postcards along the way to reassure him (especially after he saw the car) that he wasn’t making a big mistake.
And thus, one fine June morning, off the two adventurers went, pumped up with great expectations, which were somewhat deflated when they discovered that their bargain car refused to go faster than 25 MPH.
They tried everything they could think of to increase their pace. Finally, in desperation and disgust, Dad performed a maneuver that he described in his memoirs as: “yanking the spark lever all the way down.”
The car leaped ahead, and to their delight they were able to achieve a breathtaking top speed of 40 MPH on the flat.
1925 Model T
On that first day, they drove 430 winding miles into Virginia, primarily so they could impress the dean by postcard.
In those days, it was apparently customary for kids who owned cars to cover them with crazy slogans, like “Watch My Dust!,” “23-Skidoo,” or “Free Rides for Ladies.”
Observing this, John suggested that they attach a large sign to the back of their car. It read: WE AREN’T HIGH HAT! (1930s slang for stuck-up, snobbish, or conceited).
This turned out to be a stroke of genius; everyone that passed them (and many did) offered a friendly wave or horn-toot.
Dad recalled that one woman in a chauffeured limousine was so charmed by the two boys and their sign that she got up on her knees to wave to them through her back window until they were out of sight.
When they stopped for whatever reason, people were glad to help out with an extra push, water from their wells, or just smiles and words of encouragement.
They soon developed strategies for dealing with the Ford’s eccentricities, parking, for instance, at the top of steep grades when they wanted to catch a few hours’ sleep. This allowed them to coast downhill and engage the clutch to start, thus avoiding the long exhausting chore of cranking the car’s temperamental engine.
Cars in the 1920s weren’t equipped with thermometers or temperature gauges, so the boys had to monitor the well-being of their engine by watching the exhaust pipe that ran under the passenger side (a former owner had thoughtfully removed the floorboards on that side for this purpose).
“When the exhaust pipe glowed a dull red,” Dad later wrote, “conditions were excellent. When it was cherry red, things were still tolerable. But when it turned bright red, it was time to stop and look for water.”
Their long drive through the mountains of Tennessee was a series of switchbacks and curves snaking around deep ravines. (One of these, filled with leaves, provided a comfy place for them to spread their blankets and catch a night’s sleep.)
Those crazy kids were fortunate in that the weather for their entire odyssey was warm and dry, as the car’s open cab (and ventilated floorboards) afforded scant protection from the elements.
The constant back-and-forth on those Tennessee switchbacks not only made them dizzy, but also took a toll on the old flivver. They stopped on one steep mountain road when the car began to vibrate strangely.
Checking the tires, they discovered that only one loose bolt on a wobbling rear wheel had been keeping them from a long drop into a deep valley. Luckily, they were both country boys who had been fixing old machinery since childhood.
They then arrived at a section of highway that had been “improved.” “The brains behind this ‘miracle of engineering’ (Dad wrote) “had apparently calculated its grade so that newer automobiles could navigate it easily in high gear.”
Their 1925 jalopy, however, had only a high and a low gear. The high gear was useless, and in low gear, they crept along at about 3 MPH.
Ever resourceful, they discovered that if one of them jumped out and ran alongside, they could remain in high. (Fortunately, both were strong and athletic—Dad was a track star, and John the college welterweight boxing champion.)
In some places, however, they BOTH had to get out and run alongside, with one of them steering the car with one hand. Passers-by found this highly amusing, and razzed and cheered them along with cries of “Get a horse!”
Eventually they made it safely to Booneville. John dropped Dad off and continued on to his hometown in Texas. He expressed no reservations about making the rest of the trip solo. “After all,” Dad wrote, “We’d pretty much been through it all.”
Arriving home without further mishap, John later reported that he’d driven the car throughout the summer, courted his future wife in it, and sold the noble vehicle to a friend for $12.50.
Dad didn’t mention how he got back to Lafayette— presumably his family scraped up train or bus fare—but he never forgot that eccentric and gallant 1925 Ford that “had only our determination and a jaunty sign on its backside to keep itself together.”
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16. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Easton, Pennsylvania, 1950s; Sebastopol, California, 2025
GRATITUDE: A MEMORY IN CALLIGRAPHY
Recently I was searching for a quote by somebody or other on one of those online aphorism sites, and was struck by the words depicted in the photo at the end of this story.
Long ago, in the 1950s, I encountered a young girl named Susanna Gaertner in a ballet class, and we were so taken with each other that we remain friends to this day.
A tiny Susanna with her dad Johannes at Lafayette.
I also remembered meeting, on several occasions, her beloved “Papa,” who, from 1947 to 1977, was an author, artist, art educational theorist, and professor of art history at Lafayette College (my dad’s alma mater) in Easton, PA.
Susanna and her papa.
This gentle and courtly man would be described by his daughter in the introduction to his 1990 book WORLDLY VIRTUES (from which my quote originated) as: ”One of a dying breed: the European émigré humanist in whom vocation and avocation, learning for a living and living for learning, ran in perfect parallel harmony.”
I decided to celebrate this lovely coincidence in calligraphy—a tribute to a long friendship, a remarkable man, a gentle memory, and the mysteries of serendipity.
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17. THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco, Northern California, and Seven Continents
OOPS!
Or
YOUR TATTOO? YEAH, IT’S PROBABLY ALL MY FAULT
Although in other geographical areas (e.g. Japan, Polynesia, Borneo, Hawaii, and Samoa) it was celebrated as an art, a ritual, even an honor, in the USA tattooing was frequently condemned as a shadowy bastard craft, mostly associated with drunken servicemen, circus freaks, felons, outlaws, scofflaws, and other forms of degenerate lowlife.
It seemed to take place primarily in waterfront dives, back alleys, prisons, and semi-legal and unregulated “parlors” located in seedy neighborhoods, practiced by tough guys who tattooed under nicknames like: “Sailor,” “Tatts,” “Doc,” “Pop,” and “Prof.” To make things worse, in the 1960s, tattooing was adopted by biker gangs as a tribal bonding/initiation ritual.
Nice people? Well, they didn’t get tattooed, and avoided scrupulously (or persecuted) those who did.
Enter Lyle Tuttle.
A country boy born in in Iowa in 1931 to a conservative family, Lyle acquired his first tattoo at the age of 14, ditched high school, and never looked back. After a stint in the Marines, he began tattooing professionally in 1949, spending the next few years apprenticing, learning to design and build tattooing machines (you couldn’t just buy one), and working in various parlors.
Lyle as a young hunk.
He opened his own studio at the corner of Seventh and Market Streets in San Francisco in 1960. From this point on, he embarked on a series of adventures and activities that would eventually earn him the honorary title of: “The Father of Modern Tattooing.”
For one thing, his shop was large, bright, airy, and scrupulously clean. A sign in front read “Welcome Art Lovers.” Part of the layout was dedicated to an informational Tattoo History Museum filled with photos and momentos of the craft’s early days and of Lyle’s predecessors.
With Tim Page and Karen Lucius at the entrance to the 7th St. studio in 1973.
Visitors could take in examples and explanations of antique tattooing machines and implements, along with exhibits of “flash”—early artists’ design illustrations from which their customers could choose.
As his business grew, Lyle began to lobby the City of San Francisco and the State of California to institute standards of health and safety for tattoo practitioners,
and as the 1970s rolled around, his lifestyle and designs began to change with the times.
After singer Janis Joplin displayed her newly acquired tattooed bracelet and raved about Lyle on the Dick Cavett Show, a Tuttle tattoo suddenly became one of the latest “cool” accessories in emerging hip music and entertainment circles.
Janis Joplin and Dick Cavett
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9RU9TQsFw6s (Janis Joplin and Dick Cavett; Warning: lots of naughty language)
Lyle went on to tattoo, among others, singers Cher, Joan Baez, and Jo Baker; actor Peter Fonda; all of the Allman Brothers band; members of the Grateful Dead; and Paul Stanley of the group Kiss.
With his rugged good looks, sharp and folksy sense of humor, and unexpected scholarly intellect, Lyle found himself a demi-celebrity, in demand for talk shows, fine arts festival panels, and society parties.
He posed in the altogether for noted photographer Imogen Cunningham, and for Annie Leibovitz (on a ROLLING STONE holiday card), wearing nothing but his tattoos, a string of lights, a strategically placed star, and a smile.
He parlayed his machine-crafting skills into jewelry-making, designing an entire line of skull-themed jewelry for the Grateful Dead, and incorporating tattoo images into silver body décor.
He began to travel; he lectured at arts symposia in Europe; was inducted as a Chief with a traditional waist-to-knee “Pe’a” tattoo in Samoa; hobnobbed with Beatles in London; and sat in with famed skin artists in Japan. He would eventually be the first person to tattoo on all seven continents, including, in 2014, Antarctica.
Psychedelic flash
All of this was mostly in his future back in 1971, when I was writing articles for ROLLING STONE and always on the lookout for ideas. Encountering a female RS staff member with a bracelet tattoo inspired by Janis Joplin’s. I thought: “Hmmm, there’s got to be a story here.”
I wound up getting a ring tattoo (see photo below), a ROLLING STONE cover story, and a four-decade friendship with Lyle, eventually writing a number of articles about him for other magazines.
Then, in 1972, when my friend Karen Thorsen was a junior editor at LIFE magazine, I introduced her to Mr. Tuttle. She, too, immediately saw the story potential, and in March of that year, a lavish photo-essay called “Skin Game” appeared in LIFE.
It included a double-page spread showcasing the “Lyle Tuttle Bodyshirt,” a faithful reproduction of his lavishly inked upper half. (That shirt, now a collector’s item, will cost you big bucks online.)
The article featured photos of singer Jo Baker, artist Judith Weston, and me, all tastefully displaying our tats. Another page contained, oddly, a collection of cropped tattooed body parts—Karen explained that their owners had been deemed too “hippie-looking” for LIFE readers.
Pre-cropping
By the next year, according to Lyle, it was clear that an entirely new population had opened up to tattooing. Where previously this form of adornment, as far as women were concerned, had been limited to sideshow “tattooed ladies” and biker chicks, now over half of his clients were female.
Jo Baker
Me
Judith Weston
Nowadays it’s gotten to the point where your favorite movie star, musician, or sports hero, your dental hygienist, your kids’ third-grade teacher, hell, even your grandmother, might be sporting one or more tattoos.
The Father of Modern Tattooing
“It used to be something special, having a tattoo,” Lyle mock-grumbled the last time I saw him, shortly before his passing in 2019 at age 87, “like being in a tribe. Now they’re just everywhere.”
“And it’s all YOUR fault,” he continued, “you and that ROLLING STONE thing. You started it.”
Well, maybe; after all, who was I to contradict the Father of Modern Tattooing?
Personally, I prefer to blame Dick Cavett.
The Original article, complete with ads:
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18. THROWBACK THURSDAY: 1970s Swingin' London, England; Sebastopol, California, 2020s
PIRATES BANNED BY THE BBC, Or,
SQUATTING 101: A GUY NAMED JOE
My friend Arnold Martin David Levine is a slight, bespectacled, soft-spoken Englishman. Meeting him, one would never suspect that he once, long ago and far away, had a career as a nefarious pirate and notorious fugitive from justice.
Arnold
These brave ships were legally scuttled in 1967 by the Marine Offences Act, a law backed by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC or “The Beeb”).
The Beeb, which held a legal monopoly on the airwaves, considered rock “an abomination,” and not only refused to broadcast the very music that was establishing Britain as a powerhouse on the music scene, but also made it a crime for anyone else to do so.
Here; delight yourself with the film’s official trailer:
What many people don’t realize is that, after the pirate-radio ships disappeared, daring bands of “land-pirates,” broadcasting illegally from ever-changing locations, sprang up and stealthily undertook to carry on their mission.
This was an even more dangerous undertaking, as there was no longer a body of water between the land-pirates and the trackers and police units tasked with conducting search-arrest-and-destroy forays.
This five-star Amazon review by Englishman R. Wells provides a lovely precis of these events:
**********************************
“Remember growing up as a teenager in the '60s and 70s? An amazing time for rock and roll. Great music everywhere! Except London.
“Tuning across the radio dial brought you a grand total of four (yes, FOUR) radio stations, each programmed by the Government's BBC, in typical Government fashion. All quite upstanding and tame. The Beatles couldn't be heard in their Home Country!
“Enter ‘Pirate Radio’.
“The forbidden music was first broadcast from ships anchored far off-shore, and then by land-based pirates like Arnold Levine and his band of rag-tag radio scofflaws, the creators of “Radio Concord.”
Oh, the glamor of radio pirating! This photo, taken in a temporary makeshift squatted studio, was used in a newspaper article, so Arnold's face (L) is carefully blocked out.
“To avoid police raids, they had to move their operation from one place to another, often at a moment's notice. And, escape the Rozzers they did, most of the time.
“A well-told mix of English life and times, adventure, a bit of sex, some drugs and lots of rock 'n' roll! Related in a most charming fashion in the Author's native tongue. Not to worry, there's a glossary at the back of the book.
“So, settle down with a cuppa, some bikkies and a good story!”
******************
And here’s another:
“Levine does a wonderful job of showing what it was really like to be part of a pirate radio station in London, trying to free the airwaves from the tight control of the BBC.
“We follow him over rooftops, running from the cops, connecting with similar souls, meeting famous musicians and being on the cutting-edge of London culture in the 1960s and 70s.
“His radio shows become more political as he connects with a cast of characters from all walks of life, always aiming to create a more humane society. In our world of screens right now, this is a riveting, humorous and refreshing read!" (Louise Nayer)
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…and one more:
“This is a memoir by a pirate with an engineering degree, a Jewish Englishman with a plum exterior (scratch the surface of Sacha Baron Cohen and out pops Borat), a shy young man who falls into bad company and quickly becomes bad company, stringing wires in nunneries and posh London homes of friends of friends to broadcast rock-and-roll throughout London.
“At that time the BBC was the only thing on the air and illegal broadcasters were tracked down by a special squad, backed by the London police….
Rich with the flavor of the sixties/seventies rock-and-roll scene, as viewed from behind the plum curtain of BBC censorship, and how the lads pulled it back by hook or crook.” (Daniel A. Lee)
Arnold was thrilled when this photo, taken in someone's kitchen, appeared in MELODY MAKER magazine with his face blacked out.
***************************************
But what is this book these folks are so enthusiastic about, and how did it come to be written?
Well, here’s what happened: I had known Arnold for years as a mild-mannered structural-engineering consultant who hosted a weekly show on KOWS-FM Community Radio.
One day around 2019, I knocked on his home-office door and found him bent over what looked like a thick manuscript. I naturally inquired about it.
“Oh, it’s just some stuff I’ve written down about the days when I was a radio pirate.”
???????
“May I read it?”
“Oh, sure.”
I took the pages home and devoured them almost in one sitting. “Arnold,” I said, “This is going to be a book. And I’m going to edit it.” BANNED BY THE BBC, the book reviewed so enthusiastically above, was published in 2021.
Here’s just one of its riveting tales; but first, a little backstory:
1970s London, which had been heavily bombed during WWII, was suffering a severe housing shortage for any number of reasons, not the least of which was the many young people attracted to the vibrant scene known as “Swinging London.”
By the middle of the decade, Arnold’s pirate station, Radio Concord (co-founded as a lark with his childhood friend Jeffrey Schwartz, and abetted by a wild collection of colorful eccentrics), had become one of the most influential in the country. Eventually they were approached by leaders of the “squatting” movement.
Squatting, simply defined, means taking over an abandoned structure and living in it without permission of the owner. Now outlawed, at that point it was actually legal, due to a statute dating back to the Magna Carta.
Squatting Stonehenge, mostly naked.
It was, however, a bit of a precarious lifestyle, as many of the buildings were owned by landlords who had boarded them up rather than pay for costly repairs, and could send police to evict squatters at will. The powerful Squatters’ Movement provided a central clearing-house for those needing shelter, legal aid, medical help, and other forms of assistance.
Radio Concord soon became the official “Squatters’ Radio” station, interspersing their music programming with relevant news, interviews, and information. Here, from the pages of his book, Arnold describes an encounter from those days, one that he still fondly remembers as: “perhaps my most exciting pirate-radio musical achievement.”
Here's Arnold:
********************************
"In the London of this era, music was still the key binding factor in all the new street movements, and the squatting movement was no exception. Just as Concord was known as the “Squatters’ Radio,” there was an unofficial “Squatters’ Band” called the “101’ers;” inevitably, we were destined to meet.
"[One day] three of us went to their eponymous 101 Elgin Avenue squat, where the band lived communally on all four levels of the old house. As we talked, the musicians began to see the advantage of radio exposure on Concord, since there was no chance of any play for them on the BBC.
"We all got on very well, and planned some live and taped broadcasts of their performances. As a great bonus, they all agreed that we could do a live transmission from their squat!
“The lead singer and guitarist of this motley crew was a charismatic, hard-working Orbison-coiffed musical dynamo with the squatting name of “Woody Wooderson.” The 101’ers were, unashamedly, a very basic pub-rock/R&B/rock & roll band, with nary a nod to the punk movement emerging at the same time.
Portrait of the artist, by Froehlich
“The number of members varied from gig to gig and from day to day, which naturally made the quality of the music just as wildly variable, but the danceable beat was always there in any iteration.
"Along with all the old rock-&-roll chestnuts, they mainly featured Woody’s original songs, delivered in a powerful throaty emotional voice, and accompanied by slashing guitar riffs.
“When I saw him for the first time, at a gig in a squatted bank by the old Tolmer Square Cinema, I felt immediately that he was special, and definitely on his way somewhere in showbiz.
“The 101’ers would often play in such abandoned squatted halls, banks, and buildings, as well as in regular-world clubs like Ronnie Scott’s in Soho, where I witnessed a truly wondrous gig in which Woody and the band had the crowd in the palm of their collective hand.
“His (their), “Gloria” was the most powerful live version I have ever heard. (Personally, Woody’s own “Keys To My Heart” was always my favourite of his original 101'er songs, and I always requested it. I recorded the Ronnie Scott's gig on a cassette, and played it on my next show.
Bumper stickers. The station name was briefly changed to "Radio Dynamite," which they thought sounded exciting. The authorities thought they'd become terrorists, so it was changed back.
…Eventually, wisely realizing that the squatting-band scene was way too limited for his talents, Woody began to cast around for another musical outlet, and started to play with a couple of younger guys.
One afternoon during this time, as I was hanging out in his room waiting for him to return, he came in, flipped a tape cassette over to me and said casually, “Hey Supremo,” (El Supremo was my then-current DJ name) “Check out my new band!”
He had finally broken with the 101’ers, changed his named to “Joe Strummer,” and formed a new band called the Clash. Yes, at that moment I had in my hand Joe’s very own cassette of the master of their debut album. I played the tape on my next show, a first for the Clash, Radio Concord, and the world!
***************************************
(For those youngsters who might be wondering what the big deal was, here’s some stats from WIKIPEDIA):
In 2004, ROLLING STONE ranked the Clash number 28 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
In 2010, the band was ranked 22nd on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
According to THE TIMES of London, the Clash's debut…is "punk's definitive statement" and “London Calling "remains one of the most influential rock albums".
“London Calling” was ranked eighth In ROLLING STONE's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
In the magazine's 2004 list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, "London Calling" was ranked number 15.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfK-WX2pa8c (London Calling/The Clash/1979/3:21)
"London Calling" ranked number 48 in the magazine's 2008 list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time.
In 2010, the cover art of “London Calling” was one of ten albums by British music acts whose albums were commemorated on a UK postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail.
The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in January of 2003.
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Sadly, Arnold reports, that precious one-of-a-kind tape disappeared in a police raid a week or two later, but the thrill of “breaking the Clash” has stayed with him to this day.
To learn more about Arnold’s wild adventures and/or to purchase a copy of the book, go to:
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19. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Interlocken International Summer Camp, Windsor/Campbell’s Gore, New Hampshire; Late 1980s
LORE OF THE GORE, Or,
THE QUEST FOR THE DRUID CROWN; A CAUTIONARY TALE
This strange story rightfully begins in the early 18th Century, when the Colony of New Hampshire was parceled out into counties and townships. In this process, odd triangular snippets of land were occasionally left over, and, because of their spear-like shape, became known as “gores” (after “gar,” the word for “spear” in Old English).
In the mid-1700s, one such parcel, which included the spillway of a good-sized lake, became the property of an enterprising fellow named John Campbell, and became known as “Campbell’s Gore.”
Campbell founded a settlement he called Windsor, based around the operation of several water-driven mills for processing lumber from pine logs cut from the surrounding virgin forest and floated down the lake, with the remnants thriftily lathe-turned into clothespins.
Incorporated as a town in 1798, Windsor once had two hotels, two stores, a church, and two schools, but by 1885, a townsman wrote: “We now have no church, no minister, no lawyer, no trouble, no doctor, no hotel, no drunkards, no post-office, no store, no voice in legislation, no paupers, and no prospect of having any. Taxes are very light, being this year a little above the average, but still bring only $6.30 on one thousand dollars. There has never been a settled minister, a post-office or public library in town.”
Canoeing in Farimaki Swamp with Joan Wales and Pam Butler.
The reason for Windsor’s decline was quite probably the “Great New England Sheep Rush,” which began about 1810, as embargoes on English wool and the import and breeding of fine-wooled Merino sheep resulted in the denuding of about three-quarters of the state’s forestland to create pastures for the valuable ungulates.
By the late 1980s, and the time of which I write, however, the Town of Windsor had essentially melted away into nothing, and the majority of the surrounding land had reverted to second-growth forests, with the stone walls of former pastures snaking oddly through them.
The woods were also punctuated by stone-lined cellar-holes, the remains of homes summarily abandoned after 1840 when the bottom fell out the American wool market (and presumably the clothespin market), and the majority of former sheep ranchers, presumably having had their fill of New Hampshire’s rocky soil and hard winters, packed up and headed west toward better opportunities.
The land of Campbell’s Gore was, however, entirely suited to the foundation of summer camps, of which, by the 1960s, it had accumulated three, of which one was The Interlocken International Summer Camp.
From the first, the ISC was known for the maturity and diversity of its staff, who tended to be working professionals—teachers, coaches, artists, craftspeople, actors, musicians, and just plain interesting adults rather than just college kids.
Richard Herman
Also from its beginnings, the camp manifested a large amount of what Interlocken co-founder Richard Herman called “the crazy quotient”—a mindset that embraced the unusual, individual, and fantastical as part of and in the midst of a solid curriculum of experiential learning.
One summer in the 1980s, a group of energetic and whimsical staff members learned the history of the area and began spinning tales to the campers about this mysterious land of Campbell’s Gore, which soon acquired its own legend (the Lore of the Gore), presiding spirit (the “Well Being”), and eventually even its own language and script (Goreish).
Learning to write in "Goreish" script.
The last two were the work of Richard Herman’s nephew, Peter Jackson Herman (now a prominent Boston architect), who was one of several prime movers of this mythology, as was New Hampshire State Storyteller John “Odds” Bodkin.
Odds Bodkin
Of the following summer, Richard Herman recalls:
“With Odds here for the summer, we wanted to come up with a story or an idea that would plant seeds at the beginning of the season that could grow into something the kids could relate to and carry forward all summer.
“We came up with an adventure that was irresistible to anyone’s imagination, and which involved preparation and intellectual challenge and physical activity, and built up momentum on its own which didn’t have to be artificially primed or fed. There was a certain amount of archaeology, a certain amount of history, and a lot of ingenuity and learning involved.”
The amount of preparation for this ongoing event during staff orientation was somewhat astounding. Peter Herman, who had become somewhat of a pied piper to brilliant future tech-heads, was detailed to offer a class called “Windsor Archaeology” during the first week of camp, with the supposed goal of investigating the many abandoned cellar-holes in the woods near the camp. He and other staff members plotted out the tale, and scoured nearby antique and junk shops for likely materials.
Odds Bodkin relates how it all unfolded:
“I remember an amazing and wonderful group of staff people from all over the world sitting in the meeting house and talking for hours, coming up with ideas that would just add to the whole adventure that summer.
Howard Stith was one of the mainstays of the search.
We put together the most extraordinary map and aged it with coffee and smoke, then tore it into pieces and hid them in the woods and caves all around Windsor. To go with them, we concocted a story about a pirate captain and his crew landing on the New Hampshire coast and sailing up an underground river to what was then Campbell’s Gore, and is now the Township of Windsor.
“Amie “penmanshipped” the account into an old book with burned edges [note: this, and rendering the story into diary form were my sole contributions], as if the tale had been written down there by a surviving crew member.
“One day Peter Herman and his Windsor Archaeology class had stopped in for refreshments at Williams’ store down the road, and Bill, the owner, pretended that he’d found the book somewhere in the back of the shop, and nonchalantly plopped it down on the counter in front of them, saying they might find it interesting. The kids took it and began to discover a story, a diary written in the margins in what appeared to be antique script.
“The actual treasure was a crown, the “Oak King’s Crown,” that [stonemason and metalsmith] Peter Jordan made out of raw iron and a great blood-red stone, and we put it in a wooden chest that had been beaten and burned and aged, and dropped into the bottom of an 18th-century well near the [older campers’] Tent Unit before the kids arrived.
“And once it had been placed, we began to lay down the trail of clues. My wife Mil and I climbed up into the skunk caves on Windsor Mountain and chiseled Druids’ marks way in the back, and cut more of them on stones in the middle of Bagley Pond, and buried all kinds of containers —old rusty tin boxes, old-fashioned bottles, a monocular brass telescope —with pieces of the map inside. along with odd bits like antique spectacles and buckles.
“The map slowly came together over the summer as the kids found and deciphered the clues, many of which were written in Celtic Runes or an antiquated English, or Old French.
“They had to use all of their scholarship and research capabilities to figure these things out, which they did with remarkable speed. There was a cadre of kids who got totally involved and it became the focal point of their summer.”
But toward the end of the summer, all this willing suspension of disbelief unexpectedly became somewhat of a problem. Peter Herman recalls:
“I remember the quest for the crown as a magical time of running through the backwoods of Windsor with a bunch of kids. I was completely aware of the fact that we were chasing a fictitious history, but as it evolved, I became more and more convinced that I was actually uncovering something real—the playing became so vivid.
Questors Jamie Hanover and friend in costume.
“A lot of the kids got diverted to other activities, or were only peripherally involved, but I had a crew who were completely taken by the whole endeavor. And the deeper we got into the apparent realism of the Quest, the more difficult it became for me to reveal to them that it wasn’t true.
“We got to the end of the summer, and found the crown, but it wasn’t until that point that the kids learned that they weren’t finding real artifacts. They were SO excited and wanted to call the Boston Museum about this wonderful archaeological find, so we had to bring them back down to earth.
“This is where experiential learning became a dicey matter. Some of the kids were fine with it, but some felt betrayed and manipulated, and lied to, and embarrassed that they been taken in by the whole thing.”
Peter Herman
Odds Bodkin: “I suppose if we had said: “This isn’t really real,” and told them that they were playing a kind of on-the-ground Dungeons & Dragons game, they might have participated, but I don’t know whether it would’ve resulted in such excitement, or in such things as the underground newspaper that the two-month kids created for the July kids who had gone home, to keep them informed about the progress of the search.
“We had no way of predicting their reaction because we are all fairly untried at that point. But it was truly experiential education, and it certainly did lay the groundwork for the many years of quests that followed, de-bugged versions of this kind of search-and-adventure which grew out of the original Quest
“The year afterwards we did a Riddle Festival, kind of another treasure hunt, but as nifty an intellectual conceit as it was, it wasn’t nearly as effective as the Quest for the Crown. It just didn’t have the grip.”
So was the Quest for the Druid Crown a brilliant experiential- education technique or a slightly embarrassing misstep?
You know, over a quarter of a century later, we still haven’t figured that out.
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THROWBACK THURSDAY: Palace of Versailles, France, 1710; Sebastopol, California, 2015-present; Worldwide, 1710-Present
CONSIDER THE BIDET
Did you just flinch a little, reading that? You're not alone.
Mention the B-word in polite mixed company, at least in the US, and conversation tends to come to a stuttering halt. Many people seem to be weirdly embarrassed by it, as if one had just f*rted loudly in public, and rush to change the subject.
I have to confess to being addicted, as most bidet-users are, to the refreshing clean provided by this amenity. In facilities without one, there’s inevitably a rush of disappointment when I realize that I’m stuck with nothing but dry “bathroom tissue.”
(For a hilarious take on this situation, check out:
HOW BIDETS CHANGED MY LIFE, FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE
I wasn’t always this way; as an exchange student in Germany in the 1960s, I was puzzled by what seemed to be a mini-toilet in the bathroom, and cracked my German “sister” up by asking if it was for hand laundry.
It would be many years before, on the recommendation of an enthusiastic friend, I acquired (and installed by myself; it’s that easy) a “Luxe Bidet 120,” a toilet-seat attachment with a space-age streamlined look, and became a convert for life.
The word "bidet" is, amusingly, 18th-century French for "pony" or "small horse," referring to the way users had to straddle the original basin-on-legs, initially a piece of bedroom furniture placed near one’s chamber pot. Christophe Des Rosiers, a French furniture-maker for the royal family of Louis XiV, is often credited with designing one of the first known bidets, around 1710.
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| Variations on a theme. |
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Initially, the bidet was a popular item among French aristocrats, with notable figures like Napoleon owning a silver-lined one that he loved so much that he traveled with it, and passed it on to his son in his will. That’s the kind of devotion that bidets can inspire.
In the 1800s, as plumbing advanced in Western countries, the device moved from the bedroom to the bathroom, evolving from a separate portable basin to an integrated bathroom fixture connected to running water.
Then, in the 1960s, one Arnold Cohen (picturesquely known in the US as "Mr. Bidet"), invented the first bidet toilet seat in 1964 to help his ailing father.
Cohen founded the American Bidet Company, and later licensed his patent to TOTO in Japan. The TOTO company then revolutionized the industry by launching the "Washlet" in 1980, integrating the nozzle directly into the toilet seat with features like warm water and air-drying.
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| Arnold Cohen, aka "Mr. Bidet." |
The most elaborate TOTO toilets now feature automatic lid opening/closing, a heated seat, personalized warm electrolyzed-water bidet cleansing with oscillating/pulsating modes, warm air drying, an ion-barrier glaze (makes the porcelain surface super non-stick) a tornado flush and air- and UV-light deodorizing. Acquiring one will cost you between $10,000 and over $25,000 USD. (What, no built-in WiFi?) Fortunately, Toto offers much cheaper options.
So here are some interesting statistics: bidets are used by the majority of households in:
Italy (over 95%), Venezuela (90%), and Japan (approx. 80%), where they’re considered absolutely essential for hygiene. Other regions with very high usage include Greece, Portugal, Spain, Argentina, and many Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian nations, where handheld bidet sprayers (shattafs) are standard in most households.
A wall-mounted "smart" bidet.
But what about the USA? Surveys reveal that bidet ownership here is limited to under 12% of households (some estimates go as low as 6%), even with the increase of purchases during the pandemic, when toilet-paper supplies were unreliable.
Alas, American bidet adoption has historically been slowed by several deep-rooted misconceptions and cultural stigmas.
One of the most persistent of these stems from World War II, when American soldiers stationed in Europe often first encountered bidets in brothels, leading them to associate the device with prostitutes and immorality rather than with personal hygiene. They carried this negative perception back to the US, thus contributing to the creation of a long-standing taboo.
Also, many Americans seem to believe that spraying water provides less of a “clean” than wiping with paper. In reality, a water spray will get your bottom cleaner and fresher than toilet paper, without smearing, skidmarks, or irritation. Modern bidets include self-cleaning nozzles, antimicrobial materials, and sometimes incorporate UV sterilization to ensure the device itself stays clean.
Combination bidet/toilets
Another common myth is that bidets are exclusively designed for feminine hygiene. The truth is that they offer hygiene benefits regardless of gender, and are particularly helpful for seniors and people with mobility challenges or medical conditions like hemorrhoids.
There’s also a widespread concern that adding a bidet will significantly increase your water bills. Wrong. A single bidet use consumes about 1/8th of a gallon of water. In contrast, it takes approximately 37 gallons of water to manufacture a single roll of toilet paper. Using a bidet actually reduces a household's overall environmental footprint.
Then there’s the perception that installing a bidet is difficult and expensive, requiring a professional plumber or a full bathroom renovation. Although traditional stand-alone bidets require separate plumbing, I’ve plumbed two Luxe Bidet bidet seat-attachments on my own, with no previous experience. They cost less than $50 each and have never malfunctioned.
And no, the water doesn’t come from the toilet bowl: the device gets plumbed into the freshwater line leading to the toilet.
On a more cheerful note, AI reveals that the US market for bidets is growing rapidly, with a projected compound annual growth rate of 9.2% from 2020 to 2027. Latest surveys show that roughly 40% of Americans are now interested in owning a bidet or in installing one during bathroom renovations.
But there’s still that stigma. Once, when I was recommending a bidet to a friend, his concern was: “But what do we tell the kids it’s for?”
I immediately remembered a time, years back, when my niece Morgan, then about five years old, was showing me around the house designed and newly built by my brother, who had included all the amenities.
We got to the bathroom, and my little tour-guide seriously pointed out its features, one by one.
“That’s the shower,” she said, “and that’s the toilet, and that’s where we keep the towels.” As she gestured, I spotted a free-standing bidet near the toilet and asked: “And what’s that?”
“Oh,” she replied nonchalantly, “That’s the toodley-washer.”
