Welcome to my past.
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 about 20-30 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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| Photo by Laura Goldman |
COLOR KEY
Red = Tales of the 1960s and 1970s/San Francisco Stories
Pink = Encounters with Remarkable people
Green = Family and Personal Stories
Blue = Sonoma County Stories/Pennsylvania Stories
Black = Renaissance and Dickens Fair(e)s and Other Theater
Purple = Interlocken Center for Experiential Education Stories
Orange = Artwork and Art-Related stories
1. KID MAGIC, Or, WHY I LOVE THIS PHOTO
2. THE RUMBLE AND BUSTLE OF TIME: TWO PAINTINGS AND A CARTOON
3. THE WINGS OF INSPIRATION
4. A SIGN OF THE TIMES, Or, CLUELESS IN OCCIDENTAL
5. ICE DAYS AND BLOWTORCH MEMORIES
6. THE HUG SPEECH: A NATURAL EVOLUTION
7. FOX HOLLOW SQUEEZEBOX OVERLOAD
Or, THANKS FOR THE MEMORY, I THINK
8. A HOT TIME WITH CUDDLY ILMMAKERS
Or, THE TEN-YEAR ITCH: CELEBRATING ROBERT SHIELDS
9. HUGS II: THE TALE OF CHRISTINA SUSANNA]
10. HORTICULTURAL GENEALOGY:
RETURN OF THE ANCESTRAL BULBS
11. ELUDING THE CROWN: MY CAREER AS A BEAUTY QUEEN (NOT)
12. AMIE HILL: THE BIKER YEARS
13 THINGS FOUND IN OLD PORTFOLIOS #11: WRITING IN CIRCLES
14. HEY KIDS, WHAT TIME IS IT?
(TIME TO INVENT CHILDREN’S TV, OBVIOUSLY)
15. THE KEMMERERS GET THEIR PICTURE MADE
1. REPRISE
2. SEMI-SCATOLOGICAL SCHERZO FOR WINDS
3. CODA: HORNY BOYS AND FAMILY FACES.
16. THE TALE OF EGG
17. MEME NOT MIME: THE MANY FACES OF R.G. DAVIS
18. THRIFT-STORE SERENDIPITY: A POSTCARD FROM PARIS, Or, FLYING HIGH WITH ABIGAIL
19. BEST WISHES TO MRS. HILL: THE COWBOY AND THE SCHOOLMARM
20. SEE HOW THEY GROW: 14 YEARS OF SIBLING SWEETNESS
1. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Renaissance Pleasure Faire, Black Point, Novato, California; Timeless.
KID MAGIC, Or, WHY I LOVE THIS PHOTO
This image (taken by Scott Fletcher) of five more-or-less-authentically costumed little girls, seen against a quasi-magical background, embodies for me the wonder of a RPF institution: “Faire brats.”
They were EVERYWHERE, running in packs, adding to the feeling of authenticity; acting as foils and hecklers for stage improvisations; getting in the way of processions or entrances; dodging jugglers; hooting cheekily at stage shows; trilling along with sung choruses; simultaneously picturesque and feral and adorable.
Just imagine: you’re six or seven or eight years old, and for some or all of your life, once or twice a year, every weekend for six weeks, you’re plunged into this magical setting, dressed in unusual garb and set loose to amuse yourself (your adventures secretly tracked through the Faire by a voluntary network of watchful and caring grownups).
Little by little, you embed yourself into the structure of this extraordinary event; learn every lane, tree, and hideout in this mysterious oak forest.
You get fed at odd times with odd foods; catch naps in the back of random booths; make friends with adults who do fascinating and magical things for a living. You’ve found your tribe (or been born into it).
As you grow, you might get co-opted into juvenile parts in plays, parades or pageants; or decide to become a hanger-on with the Celts, or the Queen’s Court, or a Commedia dell’ Arte troupe. You might learn a skill that enables you (with permission) to pass the hat.
And before you know it, there’s an entirely new crop of Faire brats running around and getting in your way, and you’re a full-fledged actor or musician or craftsperson or busker or perimeter guard or concessionaire.
And you’re wondering, a little wistfully, where the time went, even as you remember that, ah yes, time moves differently here.
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2. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Paris, France; 1880s; USA 1930s-1940s; Sebastopol, California; 2020s
THE RUMBLE AND BUSTLE OF TIME: TWO PAINTINGS AND A CARTOON
One of the peculiarities of aging in these times of runaway tech and incipient AI, is that sometimes one is abruptly reminded that one was born in a different century.
When the youngster got to the first image depicted below, she stopped, frowned, and said: “I don’t get it.”
Examining the cartoon, I realized that, in order to find it at all amusing, one had to be cognizant of the history of two long-obscure objects.
One, for instance, had to know that, for just a little over a decade in the late 1800s, fashion decreed that elegant ladies should pad out their booties with an unwieldy item known as a “bustle” (etymology unknown, but at least more acceptable than its pre-Victorian predecessor, the “bum-roll”). This device, often assembled from metal or wicker, and combined with a corset, was thought to increase the wearer’s allure and sensuality a la Kardashian.
One of the most famous artistic interpretations of this couture atrocity was painted by neoimpressionist Georges Seurat, who featured it prominently in his most noted work, “A Sunday on the Island of the Grande Jatte.”
Then there’s the “rumble-seat” aspect of the humor.
Thinking back, I was somewhat astonished to realize that, not only did I know what this was, but that I had actually RIDDEN in one. As a small tot visiting relatives on Cape Cod in the 1940s, I clearly remember being crammed with a bunch of cousins in the rumble seat of an uncle’s car, shrieking and jouncing our way to the beach.
Me in rumble-seat days
(In the US, the last cars in equipped with such seats were manufactured in 1939. In England, where they were known as “dickey-seats,” or “mother-in-law seats,” they were marketed until 1949.)
As wartime pared down frivolities, and cars became both speedier and more numerous, the disadvantages of this arrangement became much more evident: 1. increased exposure to dust, wind and fumes, and 2. Without seatbelts—which nobody seemed to have thought of—there was a strong likelihood of passengers being popped into the air like champagne corks in the event of a collision.
In his brilliant 1935 painting, “Ride in Rumble Seat,” Norman Rockwell whimsically portrayed the two primary emotional responses such a ride evoked—exhilaration and terror.
I explained all this (the 19th-Century fashions briefly, the rumble seat at more enthusiastic length) to my young friend. She nodded in understanding, and then, placing her finger on the painting in the cartoon, looked at me inquiringly.
“No, Sweetpea,” I said, “I did NOT wear a bustle.”
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3. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Joy Ridge; Occidental, California; Late 1990s
THE WINGS OF INSPIRATION
One of the things that happens frequently when you're a collage artist is that friends start bringing you stacks of visual-art sources—calendars, magazines, random photos, ad flyers, etc.
I was flipping through such a pile one day in the late 1990s when this striking flying-bird image surfaced. I immediately stopped sorting and began to cut it out, not knowing how I'd use it.
Then my attention drifted to my crowded bulletin board, where a greeting card with the saying below had been pinned for years.
Of course, I thought.
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4. THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, California; 1967-Present; Occidental, California, 1987
A SIGN OF THE TIMES, Or,
CLUELESS IN OCCIDENTAL
As it happened, I wound up living in a lovely neighborhood a few blocks uphill from, and parallel to, the four blocks of Haight Street that formed the epicenter of that era. As a result, I could dip in and out of the counterculture at will.
While Working at a Haight St. boutique at the end of the '60s, and volunteering for years at the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic, I had a ringside seat as the groovy scene gradually slid into an abyss of crass commercialism, drug deals/overdoses, filthy streets, homeless panhandling runaways, police raids, boarded-up storefronts, failed businesses and general despair.
However, by the time I moved to Sonoma County in 1978, the Haight had begun to recover; new businesses were taking root, and older enterprises that had weathered the era were re-inventing themselves. I had even appeared as a stilt-walker at a spontaneous event that was to become, several years later, the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair.
It was sometime in 1987, when I had just returned to Sonoma County full-time from the east coast, that a friend from SF showed me a flyer advertising a contest to design a poster for the Haight’s 9th annual Fair.
“You used to live there, didn’t you?” he remarked, “You should enter this.”
Well, there was a nice cash prize, and, and needed a project, so I decided to give it a whirl.
What was I thinking?
The piece I produced (see below) naively harkened back to the still-innocent carnival atmosphere that prevailed when I first arrived in the city.
I mailed it off (pre-Internet), and in due course received I back with a nice note dryly thanking me for submitting it, but in effect, no thanks.
I understood this entirely when I saw the winning entry, an image that showed me just how much the times they had a-changed.
Today’s Haight Street is now a prime shopping district and tourist attraction (with a consciously Hippieland motif), a colorful and cohesive neighborhood that in 2023 presented its 44th annual Street Fair.
Check out this video to see that perhaps I wasn’t so clueless, just a bit ahead of the times.
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5. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania; 1940s-1950s
ICE DAYS AND BLOWTORCH MEMORIES
Having just emerged from a nearly statewide California power outage, I was reminded of my childhood in the relative backwoods of Mammy Morgan’s Hill, at a time when electrical wires were the thinnest of filaments connecting us to power, and winter “ice storms” that snapped them were a fact of life. (There were, of course, no gas lines.)
“Heavy accumulations of ice can bring down trees and topple utility poles and communication towers. Ice can disrupt communications and power for days while utility companies repair extensive damage. Even small accumulations can be extremely dangerous to motorists and pedestrians.”
In the orchard
When I was a tiny tot, and money was a bit scarce, my parents thought up ingenious solutions to warming and cooking during ice-storm blackouts. (It was years before I realized that a blowtorch was not meant for scrambling eggs over.) Fortunately, my dad had just built a wonderful fireplace that we could gather around for light and warmth, soup-heating, and corn-popping.
Fascinated by the first fire.
At night, my sister Susan and I huddled together under a mountainous duvet we called “The Fluffy Cover,” a billowing silk-covered expanse in a flowered cotton casing. I think my parents had found it at a farm auction, as it was a high-end item they could never have otherwise afforded.
Susan sitting pretty (admired by dog Snooper) on the window- seat/woodbox adjoining the fireplace.
I’d love to know what kind of bird provided the down with which it was stuffed, because no matter how much we walked, sat, jumped or rolled on it (it was one of our favorite playthings), it popped right back to its original luxuriant loft, and continued to do so until it was destroyed in a house-fire in the mid-1990s.
We kids were otherwise kept entertained by reading (when light permitted); exploring the contents of The Toy Chest; playing with dolls, Tinkertoys, building blocks, or games of Uncle Wiggily or Parcheesi.
Uncle Wiggily board
If we ourselves got too wiggily, we were taken outside to marvel at the fairyland of ordinary things transformed by their shining glaze. We were never to go near trees, since a shower of falling ice shards could do some serious damage to a little kid.
Ice storm dawn
When we got older, ice storms meant no school, as walking, much less driving a school bus on the glassy roads, was treacherous. We couldn’t really go skating—the pond was covered with a thick ice/snow crust—or sledding—the runners sank into the crust and stuck—but on at least one such day, I got to go sailing downhill on a disk-sled for a heady smiling whoosh of winter freedom.
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6. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Interlocken Center for Experiential Education; International Summer Camp; Windsor, New Hampshire, 1980s-1990s
THE HUG SPEECH: A NATURAL EVOLUTION
(Note: many of the photos here come from the 1998 book THE INTERLOCKEN DIFFERENCE, published in the days before scanning had become perfected.)
My first visit to the Interlocken International Summer Camp (ISC) was in 1972, for a three-day class session taught by my British folk-singing friends John Roberts and Tony Barrand.
John and Tony
At that point, there were about 100 ISC students, aged about 8-14, and several dozen staff members, all coming from many different countries. What struck me most about this little community in the New Hampshire woods was the extraordinary openness, affection and enthusiasm of its denizens.
ISC pals
People volunteered readily; helped out without being asked; were eager to try new things; openly expressed and listened to opinions; spoke kindly and with respect to each other. Older kids looked out for and included younger ones. There was art and music and theater, singing, and storytelling, along with more serious pursuits.
Hugs following a ropes-course session with Tony Hawgood (the tall guy).
Students frequently taught classes along with staff members, who tended to be, not college kids, but older alumni, and often educators and professionals in their own right.
“Is it always this way?” I asked.
I was told that of course there were always glitches, misunderstandings, and even problem kids, but these situations were generally dealt with openly and fairly, often with input from the entire community.
Above all, the ISC’s dominant note was a feeling of kindness and affection. I later learned that much of this came from the attitudes of Richard and Susan Herman, who founded Interlocken in 1961.
Richard and Susan Herman in the 1970s
RICHARD: “Other camp and travel programs seem to focus mostly on curriculum and facilities; our main focus is values. Our main emphasis is on the human beings who are participating.”
SUSAN: “At Interlocken there’s a strong sense of family, of community, of specialness. Some of it comes from the aesthetics of this incredibly beautiful place, but it’s also from the environment of wild creativity, freedom, and openness to trying all kinds of new things.”
Students-Turned-staff members Mark Stutman and Dahna Goldstein.
Later on, Richard would refer frequently to the “Interlocken Bubble,” a protected zone where kids could discover who they really were. A number of the students I later interviewed confided that this was the only place they felt that they could be themselves and still be appreciated.
A tangle of Cabin-unit boys
I was hooked, and returned to the ISC in 1975 with an entire circus-vaudeville troupe called “Dr. California’s Golden Gate Remedy.” We jumped into the schedule, teaching circus arts and theater techniques for a three-day mutual love-fest, culminating in one hell of a show.
In 1980, I applied to teach at the ISC for a summer, at the end of which—in my lifetime favorite job-interview moment—Richard and Susan Herman sat me down and asked: “What would it take to get you to work here full-time?”
We compromised, and through 1987 I worked at Interlocken from May through February; beyond that, I returned several weeks each summer as “enrichment staff”
During the 1980s-1990s especially, the act of hugging became a more frequent manifestation of the ISC’s warmth and closeness.
A hug for Susan
In a 1998 book, THE INTERLOCKEN DIFFERENCE, I would later write:
"Although hugging at the ISC is an entirely optional activity, and there is no organized emphasis on the ‘touchy-feely,’ many participants associate their Interlocken experience with a literal embrace…This openly affectionate atmosphere is generated by—and helps to generate—the camp’s feeling of support and safety, as well as an unusual sense of community.”
Korean Students learn the joys of costuming and hugging.
Or, as revealed by ISC parent Caroline Janover:
“Interlocken was the most affectionate climate I’d ever seen my life. The kids seemed to be so close, not only to each other, but also to the counselors, the camp directors, and everybody. It was like a giant extended family. My kids would go to Interlocken kind of snarling at each other, just rampant with sibling rivalry, and they would come back much nicer people.”
Music and dance teachers Sarah and Smitty
However, as the camp’s population swelled in the 1980s from 100 students to 160, I started noticing kids on the fringes here and there who tended to hang back and look longingly at their freely hugging peers. And thus the Hug Speech came to be.
I initially enlisted a few kids for demonstration purposes, then stood up at one of the daily morning meetings during the first week of a session, and spoke the following words:
“It has come to my attention that there are people here at Interlocken who are not getting hugged enough. So I’m here to tell you that there are three ways to change that.
“First, if you’re feeling quite brave, you can find a very friendly looking person, go up to them, smile, and give them a hug. And they will most probably hug you back. (demonstration)
“If you’re feeling a little less brave, you can find a kind-looking person, go up to them, and say “May I have a hug please?” And they will almost certainly hug you. (demonstration)
But if you’re not feeling brave at all, and you REALLY could use a hug, you can go somewhere where there are a number of friendly looking people, and go (here I would do a convincing imitation of a baby bird calling for its mother): ‘PEEP-PEEP-PEEP-PEEP-PEEP-PEEP!!!’"
At which point, and in every subsequent Hug Speech, I would be enthusiastically showered with hugs.
All summer, kids (and occasional staff members) would come up to me or to others, peeping away to request a hug. It was sometimes heard as BEEP-BEEP-BEEP, which worked just as well.
I gave this speech each session for years with delightful results. Occasionally, however, staff members from other countries would be taken aback by this open season on hugging. I particularly remember a young Korean woman who was completely nonplussed by it, but wrote on her final assessment: “Cold swimming, clean-up, I don’t like. Hug I like very much.”
I’ll give the last word here to Samantha Maguire, whose family lived next door to Interlocken, and who pretty much grew up at the ISC. Interviewed in 1997 as a teenager, she said:
“It’s hard to put your finger on what makes this place different. Whenever I try to explain Interlocken to people, I say ‘This is the schedule, you wake up, you do this, you do that,’ and they say, ‘It sounds like a normal camp.’ But it’s not; this place catches hold of you. It just works and it’s just different, and it’s inexplicable.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself, Sammy. (PEEP-PEEP-PEEP-PEEP-PEEP!)
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And a big shout-out to Holly Almgren, who taught me the whole "PEEP!" thing.
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7. THROWBACK THURSDAY: FOX HOLLOW FESTIVAL, PETERSBURG, NEW YORK; EARLY 1970S
FOX HOLLOW SQUEEZEBOX OVERLOAD
Or
THANKS FOR THE MEMORY, I THINK
The photo below was taken at the legendary Fox Hollow Folk Festival in the early 1970s, and originally posted on Facebook by Dr. Anthony Barrand, retired University of Massachusetts professor of anthropology (5th from R, in top hat).
This annual event, now vanished into the mists of time, was an all-acoustic jewel, held each August on a beautiful old upstate New York estate formerly owned by prohibition-era gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond.
(This property was also the haunting grounds for several well-documented ghosts, including a motherly female spirit who was wont to wake guests in the house at night by tucking them in after they’d gone to sleep.)
The festival was hosted by the Beers Family (folk music’s New-England-patrician version of the Carter Family Singers), and featured the best of the folk world, heavily weighted toward the British Isles/Celtic/Gaelic/old-timey/fiddle-tune/soulful ballad/storyteller/contradance scene, but open to anomalies like Dr. California’s Golden Gate Remedy, the circus-vaudeville troupe with which I toured the country in 1975.
Fox Hollow was where I first met British duo John Roberts and Tony Barrand, with whom I was to tour the east-coast festival circuit for the next three summers.
Dick Levine, John Roberts, Tony Barrand, Barry O' Neill
This photo op came about one year when it was discovered that there was an extraordinary concentration of concertina-players present (ten, if you count them), and, as the festival smiled on whimsical spontaneity, they all decided to celebrate the fact by performing onstage together.
So here’s the thing: while I have many fond memories of Fox Hollow Festivals, I have NO recollection whatsoever of this event; nor of what (other than playing tambourine bimbo) I was doing onstage with all those brilliant British and American musicians; nor of what tune(s) they played (something about a mine disaster?).
I was not ingesting mind-altering substances at the time (although the festival itself was somewhat mind-altering, what with non-stop music going day and night with very little sleep involved, and the ghost stories, and the Northern Lights drifting eerily across the sky), so I can only attribute this total blankout to the well-known mind-wiping effect of a critical mass of concertinas played simultaneously.
A Fox Hollow performance
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8. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Graton, California; Los Angeles, California; Sedona, Arizona c. 2014-2024
About ten years ago, I received an email from someone named Mark Bonn. In it he inquired if I were the Amie Hill who was the friend of mime/actor/artist Robert Shields and had written about him in ROLLING STONE and elsewhere.
Mark and Christine
They'd started their production company, My Monkey House, in 2002, and their very first film, LETTERS TO DEFIANCE, won an Honorable Mention at the 2005 ReelHeART International Film Festival in Toronto, received two Telly Awards, and was at that point showing on PBS stations.
Their next documentary, IN TIMES OF WAR: RAY PARKER, which premiered at the 2007 Durango Independent Film Festival, won a Jury Commendation Award. It went on to win six Best Documentary Short awards, as well as an Audience Choice Award at the 2012 Sedona International Film Festival.
A third film, WINGS OF SILVER: THE VI COWDEN STORY, has won a total of 11 awards, including five Audience Choice Awards.
Although all of their films so far had centered on WWII, Mark said, they had recently met Robert and had become fascinated by his story. Would I be willing to be interviewed for this project?
Well, of course I would.
When Mark and Christine showed up at my tiny Graton cottage, it was late summer, and the temperatures were in the nineties. Fitting all of their very professional equipment into my small living room was a challenge, as was the fact that all the curtains and shades had to be closed to allow for proper filmic lighting.
Close quarters
During this process, I decided that Mark and Christine had to be the world’s cuddliest filmmakers. They chose a chair and background for me, sat me down, and proceeded to lob funny and provocative questions at me, responding with silent laughter and wiggling “applause” fingers to many of my answers, filming skillfully all the while. I felt very appreciated, and a silly good time was had by all.
Christine was wearing a back brace from an injury.
We kept in touch. Time passed. The title of the film was changed from THEY SHOOT MIMES, DON’T THEY? to ROBERT SHIELDS: MY LIFE AS A ROBOT.
A Renaissance Faire photo with Robert
Robert talking about the photo for the film
Mark and Christine, toiling away on the project between their day jobs (Mark was a film editor for a major network) spent what would turn out to be years fitting together the wildly varying scenarios of Robert’s life; collecting and obtaining permissions for innumerable photos and film clips; tracking down family members, friends, admirers, fellow performers, managers, celebrities, and producers; persuading them to be interviewed; setting up times and doing actual interviews.
MARK: “We're having the time of our lives expanding our versatility in the area of biographical documentaries. Robert Shields has, literally, gotten us up off our seats and out into a whole new world of art and action! “
Robert and his partner Lorene Yarnell. They had their own show on CBS for two seasons.
The work was, however, slowed at times by considerations of health, family, legalities—and, since the Bonns fund their documentaries entirely on their own—money.
MARK AGAIN: “All of our projects thus far are self-funded, using our savings and all of our spare time, but ...our reward is the creation of documentaries that touch so many people, and open them up to a world they might never have otherwise known. One thing I especially love is that each project is done by only Christine and me, and not by a huge production company.”
This was by far the most complex undertaking the two of them had ever tackled. But oh my, was it worth the wait!
ROBERT SHIELDS: MY LIFE AS A ROBOT turned out to be a delightful, colorful, streamlined hellszapoppin’ look at the improbable career(s) of a fiendishly talented and lovable individual, and worth every drop of sweat.
Following the premiere at the Sedona International Film Festival in March, 2024.
9. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania, c. 1983
HUGS II
Or
THE TALE OF CHRISTINA SUSANNA]
The title page of the original manuscript
Front row: Sue, my mother, Christina Susanna; Sitting on table: me, Kip and David; Back row: Dad and Scott.
It was actually during this visit home with my siblings that I noticed a strange aspect of Christina’s behavior: when approached by someone with affectionate intent, she would kind of shy like a pony, and even, on occasion, run away.
Thinking it over, it didn’t take me long to decipher this behavior. Christina was a “surprise baby,” born when her two big brothers (Kip, barefoot and shirtless in the photo and Scott, in the red and white shirt) were well into their teens, she was surrounded here by quite large people.
There was her 6-foot-tall PaPa (my dad, the gent at upper left with white hair): her two husky brothers; her rugby-and-football veteran uncle David (at right); and her dad (presumably behind the camera), a former champion wrestler. Even my mother, my sister, and I, all 5’4” tall or under, must’ve seemed very large to her.
Christina and her PaPa
The crux of the matter was that little Christina Susanna was such an adorable child that you couldn’t help wanting to swoop her up in your arms and kiss, hug, tickle and/or cuddle her. This happened so often that she had become what I thought of as “hug-shy.”
Later, back in California, I thought over Chris’s situation, and an idea began to take root: a set of rhymed verses about hugging and kissing. I wrote them out in calligraphy, added some rudimentary illustrations, and send it off to Christina and her family.
Chris apparently loved her imaginary adventures, and even, as a high-school kid, memorized the entire thing to use in a speech competition.
Giving Christina a smooch in her teens.
In 2017, I came upon a copy of the manuscript, and decided to create a new series of illustrations for it. The results can be seen at:
CHRISTINA SUSANNA (1984/2017)https://christinasusanna.blogspot.com/ (168 lines, 18 illustrations
Recently I asked Christina, now a grown-up mother of two beautiful daughters, if she knew where the original manuscript was.
Christina in 2024 with daughters Kyla (R) and KK.
“It’s in a safety deposit box,” she replied. “Before I had children, it was the first thing I would’ve saved if the house had caught on fire. It always made me feel so special that you wrote a story about me.”
Well, darn it, she IS special. (And by the way, she now loves to hug.)
Another smooch from Auntie, in 2021.
(Below are a few of the 2017-edition illustrations and their accompanying verses.)
(CHRISTINA TAKES A WALK)
Christina Susanna went out for a walk
On a very hot day, and sat down on a rock
To rest for a moment and take off her shoes
And let the wind tickle her ten little toes,
Christina Susanna went out for a walk
On a very hot day, and sat down on a rock
To rest for a moment and take off her shoes
And let the wind tickle her ten little toes,
(A BEAR HUG)
And before she could speak, she was swooped up inside
The furriest hug of her life. "Oh!" she cried,
"Please excuse me, dear Bear" (being very polite)
"But there's fur in my mouth and your teeth are so white
And so sharp that I fear if you smile too wide
Some child might (by accident) end up inside,
Oh you ARE holding tight and there ISN'T much air,
It's a VERY hot day to be hugged by a bear!"
(BUTTERFLY KISSES)
Her eyes had just closed (for the air was so sweet
With the flowers for a bed and the wind on her feet)
When she suddenly heard the swift whisper and whirr
Of a hundred small wings, and all hovering 'round HER,
And what did she see when she opened her eyes?
The shimmer of hundreds of bright butterflies!
Who cried with one voice: "Why, good heavens above!
Christina Susanna! May we kiss you, my love?"
Her eyes had just closed (for the air was so sweet
With the flowers for a bed and the wind on her feet)
When she suddenly heard the swift whisper and whirr
Of a hundred small wings, and all hovering 'round HER,
And what did she see when she opened her eyes?
The shimmer of hundreds of bright butterflies!
Who cried with one voice: "Why, good heavens above!
Christina Susanna! May we kiss you, my love?"
(AN ELF-BABY LOSES HIS TEMPER)
“The Uncles and Aunties they all had their turn,
Making such silly noises my tummy would churn,
When I cried, they’d surround me with coos of concern
And give me MORE kisses; why wouldn’t they learn?
“So then I grew angry, and young as I was,
I turned the air blue with the force of my fuss,
'Don't hold me don't touch me!’ I bellowed and bawled,
'I won't let you hug me or kiss me at all!”
“The Uncles and Aunties they all had their turn,
Making such silly noises my tummy would churn,
When I cried, they’d surround me with coos of concern
And give me MORE kisses; why wouldn’t they learn?
“So then I grew angry, and young as I was,
I turned the air blue with the force of my fuss,
'Don't hold me don't touch me!’ I bellowed and bawled,
'I won't let you hug me or kiss me at all!”
(A KISS FOR A STRANGE LITTLE CREATURE)
The creature rose quickly, not seeming much hurt,
But his poor ugly nose was all covered with dirt,
He took a deep breath, and he squinched up his eyes,
But before he could cry, he was greatly surprised
By a quick little wipe with a dainty bandanna
And a kiss on the nose from Christina Susanna!
The creature rose quickly, not seeming much hurt,
But his poor ugly nose was all covered with dirt,
He took a deep breath, and he squinched up his eyes,
But before he could cry, he was greatly surprised
By a quick little wipe with a dainty bandanna
And a kiss on the nose from Christina Susanna!
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THROWBACK THURSDAY: Rural Arkansas; 1880s; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1990s; Occidental, Graton, Forestville, and Sebastopol, California, 2000-Present
10. HORTICULTURAL GENEALOGY:
RETURN OF THE ANCESTRAL BULBS
Knowing my interest in family history, Dus wondered if I’d like him to send me some of the special flower bulbs then growing in his Oklahoma City backyard. This was their story:
On a spring day several years previously, he’d traveled to a parcel of land south of Booneville, Arkansas, the town where he and my dad had grown up. His intent was to take a look at the farmstead where my great-granddad, Augustus Roan Hill (1832-1917) had settled when he moved from Mississippi in 1881 with his wife Ruth Alice Wilson Hill (1841-1922).
A.R. Hill with my dad (C) and my Uncle Horace, c. 1915
Their farmhouse, he discovered, was long gone, but he could still see its exact dimensions, outlined clearly by a thick border of golden jonquils that Ruth Alice had planted, presumably in an effort to make the lonely spot more homelike.
Dus tracked down the current landholder and requested and received permission to come back and dig up some of the bulbs, which he’d then planted in his backyard.
I said I’d be delighted to have some of them; they arrived about a week later, unlovely objects caked in the gluey red clay for which Oklahoma is famed. “Boy,” I thought,” If they can grow in this stuff, they’ll grow ANYWHERE.”
I planted them in a little meadow that sloped away from my cabin, and sure enough, the next spring, up they popped, a scattering of sunlight-yellow in a deep-blue cloud of forget-me-nots. (Sadly, when I visited the following spring, hoping to see the display, I discovered that the new owners, city folks, had mowed the meadow down to nubbins, trying to create a lawn.)
That fall I received notice that the cabin was to be sold, and moved to my friend Judith’s lovely house and garden in the tiny town of Graton, taking with me a potful of what I’d begun to think of as the “Ancestral Bulbs.' They grew and thrived—one year, I counted about 30 blooms in that single pot.
They likewise thrived when I moved a few miles away to the townlet of Forestville for two years, and then back to Judith’s rental in Graton, where I built up an impressive container garden.
Container garden at Judith's
There was the year I decided to replant the now-crowded bulbs into a larger pot, using a yummy commercial potting-soil blend, which they HATED.
They came up, but drooped and sulked; no flowers. Then came years of bad juju:
…the year that some varmint nipped them off at ground level; no flowers.
…the year that the squirrels dug them up looking for acorns; no flowers.
…the year that I fertilized according to Google: lots of juicy foliage; no flowers.
…the year that the pot accidentally got shifted to a spot where it received runoff from the asphalt roof. Yellowed foliage; no flowers.
…the flowerless years recovering from these events—I despaired of ever seeing those bright fragrant blooms again.
Finally, this year, I adopted an attitude of benign near-neglect as the torrential winter rains leached the nutrients from the pot, rendering the soil finally poor enough for the tough little plants.
Yesterday, I celebrated the long-awaited return of the Ancestral Bulbs, a delicate blossom providing a 143-year-old link to my great-grandmother Ruth Alice, a vibrant woman immured in a lonely farmhouse with the dour veteran of a defeated Confederate Army, just trying to provide herself with a little beauty.
Ruth Alice Wilson Hill
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11. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Syracuse, New York; Autumn 1962
ELUDING THE CROWN: MY CAREER AS A BEAUTY QUEEN (NOT)
When I was a senior in high school, I took something called the Kuder Preference Test, a selection of inquiries that, taken collectively, were supposed to reveal the future career to which I’d be most suited.
1. Shakespearean Actress
2. Forest Ranger
I wound up going to Syracuse University almost by accident. I’d been accepted at a number of schools but for various reasons, we’d made no campus visits or tours of any of them. The final choice was made by my parents and the school guidance counselor, because I figured that wherever I wound up would be interesting and I could meet people and learn stuff. (Had I only known about upstate New York winters….).
The residence hall to which I was assigned was called “Washington Arms,” a repurposed apartment building looming at the edge of a seriously dodgy part of town known as the 15th Ward.
"The Armpit"
I found myself sharing a four-person “suite” with a rich-girl art student and a sweetly nerdy math prodigy. Who snored. Loudly. The three of us, along with three beds and three desks, were crammed into what must have once been a smallish living room. The only single bedroom was occupied by a. 6-foot-tall forestry student who, as far as I could determine, never changed her sheets for an entire semester.
The halls of “The Armpit,” as it was affectionately known, were painted dark brown; the rooms a hospital green that no amount of frilly curtains or pretty rugs could make homelike. There was minimal closet space, and the entire dorm was heated by radiators that clanged and hissed and branded you on the butt if you bent over in the tiny bathroom after a shower.
But, hey, this was college, and I was ready to embrace the experience.
Then, at our first dorm meeting, following introductions and a recitation of rules and regulations, the next item on the agenda was selecting our residence hall’s candidate for Homecoming Queen. I was fairly astounded to be one of six girls nominated, and even more so when a secret ballot selected me as our living unit’s sacrificial goat.
I was at first inclined to refuse the (dubious) honor, but I was an 18-year-old kid who just wanted the other girls to like me. Besides, I had the example of my older sister Sue, who was several times chosen queen of this or that festivity, beginning in high school with Prom Queen.
She made the dress, too.
Sue never campaigned for these honors, or put herself forward, but she was such a sweetheart that crowns, real or metaphorical, occasionally seemed to float onto her head of their own accord.
She was even chosen (out of a row of photos) by no less a person than Paul Newman, to be “Miss TOUCHSTONE” in the Hood College yearbook of that name. He wrote that it was “a matter of vibrations.”
Sue as Miss TOUCHSTONE. When her son Kip was little, he once showed me this photo and said, "This is Mommy when she was the Hairdo Queen."
So, feeling out of place and slightly awkward, I went along with the queen business. Its first manifestation was an informal punch-and-cookies mingler with all of the candidates and, among them, the anonymous judges.
There we were, all the newbies dressed in that years’ uniform of crew-neck sweater over button-down shirt, wool skirt, knee-socks and penny loafers. (Mine were not the preferred Bass Weejuns™ brand, but at least I’d had the sense not to put pennies in them.)
We mingled and chatted, and since I had no expectation that I’d actually be chosen, I actually had a good time meeting and conversing with some interesting fellow freshmen. Most of us were in awe of the glamorous upperclassmates swanning about in cashmere twinsets glittering with fraternity and sorority pins.
A week or so later, to my surprise and dismay, I was notified that I’d made the final cut. At this point quite a few of my dorm-mates had become fully invested, and bombarded me with advice and suggestions to improve my candidacy.
The final queen-choosing event was described as a formal tea requiring a dress and high heels. According to the other girls, I had no suitable dress, and my low-heeled comfortable shoes weren’t considered formal enough. My handlers rushed around to find higher ones that almost fit and almost went with the loaner dress they picked out.
On the day of the tea, I drew the line at poofing up my short haircut with rollers, but let them do my makeup, despair over my fingernails, tweak my outfit, and put me in a taxi to my destination, an administration building with a formal reception room.
As the candidates arrived, we were instructed to walk into the room, introduce ourselves to the judges—older students and faculty members seated on a loveseat and some low armchairs— and tell them our names and where we were from.
We were then to go over to a serving table; pour ourselves a cup of tea; pick up a cloth napkin; take a fork and a plate with a slice of cake; and find a seat somewhere on a semicircle of folding chairs facing the judges; presumably all without clanking the silverware, tripping over our feet, or spilling anything on anyone.
I couldn’t imagine what all this had to do with sitting in a convertible at a football game waving to the crowd, but I did my best, and managed to negotiate the tea-table without disaster.
I took a seat at the most remote corner of the chair-rows and surreptitiously watched and copied the others—mostly veteran queen-wannabees—as they spread their napkins across their laps (their legs canted gracefully to the right), placed the cake plate on their knees on top of the napkin and used their forks daintily to take bites tiny enough to wash down surreptitiously without chewing and risking a crumbs-in-teeth moment. I followed suit.
Then the judges began to ask questions of individual girls mostly along the lines of: “What was your most exciting experience in the past year?”
Well, there was the girl who’d made her debut in New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel; the girl who’d adorned a float in the Cherry Blossom Parade in Washington DC as Miss Sweet Magnolia; the girl who had been runner-up as a spokesmodel on STAR SEARCH. You get the idea. And if these girls were any indication, my dress was all wrong, my hair was all wrong, my shoes were all wrong; hell, my LIFE was all wrong. I was a cabbage moth in a roomful of butterflies.
Listening to the young woman next to me gushing about being chosen for the National Cheerleading Competition where she had “cheer-led” with this year’s current Miss America, I desperately tried to think of a comparable experience, but the only thing they came into my head was managing not to fall off my mount while winning the barrel-racing event at a regional horse show.
Fortunately the subject was changed when one of the girls, while mentioning the thrill of her acceptance at the school’s most prestigious sorority, commented on sorority-rush procedures, whereupon various girls were asked for their opinions on the subject.
I of course had no opinion at all except a definite thought that was forming in my head. In current terms, it would’ve been: “These are NOT my people.”
Just then a judge turned to me and asked what I thought. I stood up carefully, placed my fork on the cake plate on the napkin on the chair with the teacup and saucer, and said clearly: “I think I’m in the wrong room.” I managed to walk out without falling head-over-too-high-heels, and escaped with a sigh of relief.
“How did it go?” my dorm-mates asked eagerly when I got back.
“Oh, as well as could be expected.” I said.
I was, of course, not Homecoming Queen, which was just fine with me. After attending one rush party, I also never joined a sorority.
A free spirit at Syracuse
For the next four years, I proceeded to have a (mostly) good time, try many new and fascinating things, learn a lot, meet many interesting people, and graduate CUM LAUDE.
Syracuse University’s official Latin motto is: SUOS CULTURES SCIENTIA CORONAT, which translates as: “Knowledge Crowns Those Who Seek Her."
So there.
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12. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Green Bay, Wisconsin; 1965-66; Sonoma County, California, 1981-94
AMIE HILL: THE BIKER YEARS
The photo below was taken to accompany a 1993 article that I wrote on the subject of motor scooters as alternative transportation. At that point, since I had been scooting on and off since the mid-1960s, I had earned some authority on the subject.
“Well, sorry; cycles in the scooter range, tend to putt-putt, buzz, hum or purr. The motor scooter belongs more to the bicycle mentality than the macho motorcycle mystique.
“Most scooters are more sat on than straddled, with the feet often resting decorously on a platform rather than on foot-pegs. Their step-through design makes them practical even for someone wearing a skirt, habit, or burnoose.”
And so forth.
My career as a biker began in 1965 when I took a job as a drama supervisor and playwright for the exemplary Green Bay (Wisconsin) Park and Recreation System. The catch was that I needed transportation to get myself around to the city's widely scattered neighborhood parks.
Owning a car wasn’t practical or affordable for me then, so my dad came up with the idea of purchasing a 50CC Honda Passport scooter. (CC stands for Cubic Capacity, and represents both the volume of the chamber of the bike's engine, and its power output.)
The tiny Passport was technically classified as a “Motor-Driven Cycle,” not a motorcycle, and certainly NOT a moped, as there were no pedals involved. With a top (safe) speed of around 35 MPH, it was street- but not freeway-legal.
Thus, for two summers between college and grad-school sessions, I blithely tootled around the streets of Green Bay on my little red scooter, wearing shorts or sundresses and sandals or sneakers, hair tied up in a scarf (not a helmet in sight) feeling like a girl in an Italian film. By a combination of instinctive caution, good reflexes and dumb luck, I survived both summers without a single mishap.
My second biker interval began in 1981 in Sonoma County, when, again in need of affordable transportation, I acquired that year’s version of the Passport, now bumped up to 70CCs.
With this updated machine, I enjoyed the advantage of not having to deal with easily corroded "points" (a type of electrical switch in older internal-combustion engines), making this one a lot easier to maintain. I became a pretty good scooter mechanic in those years.
Tuf-Two
By this time helmets had become the law in California, and I acquired one (named “Helmut”). Riding around the back roads of often-foggy-windy-and-chilly Sonoma County, I wore bibbed ski overalls, warm layers under a hooded windproof jacket, sturdy boots or shoes, and warm gloves.
That newspaper article, written in July of 1993, went into great detail about various scooter options. To finish it off, I listed the pros and cons of this form of transportation.
Number one in the “cons” section was, of course, exposure to both the elements and to the vagaries and unpredictability of other drivers. I sagely pointed out that scooter-riders were exactly as exposed as bicyclists, but with the potential for wiping out at higher speeds.
Number two was the issue of the bikes’ limited carrying capacity. I became an expert in the use of baskets, bungee cords, and backpacks, and eventually was easily able to transport a week’s worth of groceries, library books, and other incidentals without a problem.
Number three was: “no fashion statements.” I got resigned to wearing clothes that wouldn’t crush easily and a do that wouldn’t leave me with an ugly case of helmet hair. In rainy weather I’d don a L.L. Bean rain-suit, rubber boots, elbow-length rubber gloves, and goggles, and I got quite expert at aquaplaning down the steep swoop of Bittner Road leading from Joy Ridge to my job in Occidental.
The “pros” were much easier:
1. Cost to run. Both bikes got at least 100 miles per gallon of gas. Back then I could fill up my tank for about a dollar. Registration fees and insurance were both under $50.
2. Ease of parking. There was always a legal space somewhere for the little scooter, although I did receive the only parking ticket of my life when I left the Passport in a metered parking space on a main street in Green Bay, and someone picked it up (it weighed 145 pounds), deposited it on the sidewalk, and took my spot. I returned to find that I’d been ticketed for parking on the sidewalk. (The traffic court judge thought this was greatly amusing and tore up the ticket.
3. Maneuverability. I always rode as if I were on a bicycle, and got out of EVERYBODY’s way, transitioning to bike lanes when people needed to pass. A little scooter is also a joy in stalled traffic.
4. Storing or garage space. There always seemed to be a corner where a scooter would fit. (Mine took up about the same space as a bicycle with panniers.)
5. But one of the most outstanding “pros” was what I called “The Wheeee! Factor." Because of the low handlebars, the comfortable seat, and the sturdy foot position , I often felt that I was sitting regally on what I thought of as my “flying chair,” propelling myself effortlessly through space.
My biking days ended in the mid-1990s, and henceforth I traveled by automobile, which was simultaneously much easier (in terms of toting laundry, groceries, etc.) and much less fun.
And these days, when I see people breezing around on their electric bikes, trikes, scooters, and skateboards, I feel a genuine pang of nostalgia for those easy-riding days of my youth.
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13. THROWBACK THURSDAY: India, c. 400 C..E; China, 868 C.E.; Occidental, California, early 1990s
THINGS FOUND IN OLD PORTFOLIOS #11: WRITING IN CIRCLES
Recently a friend sent me this NEW YORK TIMES article on the resurgence in popularity of the ancient art of calligraphy.
Not long after that, while rummaging around, I happened on some early writing of my own. In the 1990s I was commissioned to create a calligraphy piece using a lovely English translation of a famous verse from the “Diamond Sutra.” (A sutra is a kind of cross between an aphorism and a piece of scripture.)
The “Diamond Sutra” is a brief and very popular Buddhist text widely used in East Asia. It takes the form of a dialogue between the Buddha as teacher, and a disciple as questioner, on the illusory nature of phenomena. The first Chinese translation of it from the much older Sanskrit version appeared about 400 C.E.
The world's first known printed book, the "Diamond Sutra" as interpreted in 868 C.E. by a Chinese scribe named Wang Jie. This “handscroll” edition resides in the British Library.
This modern-day commission coincided with the realization that I had never executed a circular piece of calligraphy (though I’d done a spiral some years earlier), and I was inspired to create the work below.
Thus shall you think of all this fleeting world
A star at dawn, a ripple in a stream
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud
A phantom, an illusion, and a dream.
A star at dawn, a ripple in a stream
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud
A phantom, an illusion, and a dream.
When I’d finished, however, it seemed to me somewhat overwrought, and I eventually went with a simpler, more traditional design. Still, I have to admire my audacity in attempting this piece, what with the illusory nature of phenomena and all.
Spiral design with Latin and Sanskrit texts.
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14. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania, Early 1950s
HEY KIDS, WHAT TIME IS IT?
(TIME TO INVENT CHILDREN’S TV)
When I was little kid growing up in the wilds of rural Pennsylvania, TV was more of a concept than a reality. Although my sister Susan remembers lobbying my dad for a television after seeing one at a friend’s house, I was content with early radio programs like “No School Today” with Big Jon and Sparky, “Baby Snooks,” and various story hours.
With Susan (L) in our Doody days.
My dad, being in market research, quite rightly divined the addictive power of this new medium, and was adamantly opposed to introducing it into our household.
Then, in the early 1950s, the Acme Market (the only local rival to the mighty A&P) came up with a brilliant marketing strategy: any school or other educational organization that could collect $10,000 worth of Acme receipts would be awarded a TV set.
Naturally we all begged our mothers to shop at Acme. Over the course of many months, the receipts slowly mounted up, and were stored in paper bags at Fairview school (the hilltop third of our one-room-school system), in which the fifth and sixth grade were housed, and in which, it had been decided, the anticipated TV would make its home.
Fairview School
Finally, the painstakingly accumulated “Acme slips,” as we all referred to them, were exchanged for a modest-sized TV, and of course every kid within walking distance piled into the school after hours to goggle at basic shows like the sweetly wooden puppetry of “Kukla, Fran, and Ollie,” the acrobats and aerialists of “Super Circus,” and a show that featured primitive pre-Disney cartoons and was hosted by “Patches,” a guy in a coonskin cap.
For kids who had seldom been off the farm, all this was a revelation. My sister attended Fairview, and it was within easy walking distance from our house, so after-school TV-watching (until we were shooed home for dinner) soon became a habit.
Alonzo Kittrels, a PHILADELPHIA TRIBUNE writer, later recalled:
“Just the mention of watching television in the past reminds me of the days when you had to wait what seemed like forever for the television to warm up with an eerie whistle-crackle sound and for the picture to appear.
“All operations of the television, not only turning it on, but locating stations, weren’t done using a remote control, but by turning a knob on the front panel, which was no big deal since there were only three major VHF (Very High Frequency) channels—NBC, ABC, and CBS.
“Frequently, the screen would reveal itself as a crackling mass of "'snow,' indicating that the “rabbit ears” (indoor antenna, often supplemented with aluminum foil), or the roof antenna needed to be adjusted.
"In those days, believe it or not, there were long stretches of time, mostly at night, when there was no programming, and the screen was occupied by a 'test Pattern,”'a circular geometric design that just sat there and buzzed.”
Before long, choosing his battles, Dad bowed to the inevitable; one day we came home from Fairview to find a TV, even bigger than the one at school, installed in our living room. Now our parents had some control over our viewing, and we were, in those early times, limited to one hour per day.
Susan and I varied our choices for the first after-school half-hour of each weekday, but the second half was marked by our near-fanatical devotion to that kids-TV pioneer, HOWDY DOODY.
Debuting in 1947 on NBC, the show was originally set in a circus, which accounted for the presence of the mute, horn-honking, seltzer-squirting Clarabell Clown, originally played by Bob Keeshan (who went on to become “Captain Kangaroo”). Clarabell never spoke because, had he uttered a single word, he would have had to be paid union scale and the show was on a strict budget in those early days.
From Left: Clarabell the Clown, Howdy Doody, Princess Summerfall Winterspring, and Buffalo Bob Smith.
Soon, however, DOODY’s producers had discovered the expense and limitations of a circus theme, and had transferred its imaginary location to small western town called “Doodyville.” By this time, Clarabell had become such a popular feature that he somehow became an improbable resident of that fictional location. Why not? Nothing there was normal.
Doodyville was occupied in equal parts by cleverly manipulated marionettes and live characters, presided over by jovial “Buffalo Bob” Smith , who also voiced a number of the puppets. The titular Howdy Doody was one of the marionettes, a miniature cowboy with boots and bandanna, red hair, and 48 freckles for the (then) 48 states.
Buffalo Bob and the Peanut Gallery
This was, by the way, the very first show to feature a live audience, the “Peanut Gallery,” an onstage bleacher section crammed with wriggling and enthralled kids always referred to as “Peanuts.” This arrangement served not only as a live-applause track, but as a chorus for sing-alongs, and an easily amused entity for the live characters to play off of.
(Historical note: the "peanut Gallery" was the widespread theatrical designation for the block of cheapest seats in the balcony. Its occupants tended to be of the lower classes, and any rowdiness or heckling were likely to come from it.)
My sister and I, living in rural Pennsylvania, were not especially aware of the lack of Peanuts of color, nor of the blithely blatant racism of the “Indian” characters seen on the program, all portrayed by white actors.
There was Chief Thunderthud, head of the Ooragnak (kangaroo spelled backwards) Tribe, a “wild Indian” “tamed” by Howdy and his friends. The chief spoke in a hokey fake Indian dialect peppered with lots of “How!” and “Ugh!”
I remember clearly an episode in which Chief TT was chasing Clarabell the Clown, who climbed into the Peanut Gallery and hid among the kids. Enter Thunderthud, tomahawk in hand; after a cursory inspection of the gallery, he turned his back on it.
Bill LeCornel as the first "Chief Thunderthud"
Clarabell honked his trademark horn, Thunderthud whipped around, failed to spot his ducked-down prey, and declared “Ugh! Me no like honking Peanuts!” Knowing no better, we thought that this was hilarious at the time.
Racial insensitivity aside, the Chief did contribut to the pop lexicon by frequently exclaiming the invented word “Kowabunga!” today still much beloved of surfers and Bart Simpson.
The original Thunderthud was replaced by another actor (urban legend says that this was because the first guy once used profanity in front of the Peanut Gallery). The new one started out as another Thunderthud, then became “Thunderchicken,” then “Chief Feather-Man.”
Judy Tyler as Princess Summerfall Winterspring
Much less objectionable, though equally tone-deaf, was the lovely Princess Summerfall Winterspring (of the fictional “Tinka-Tonka Tribe”) played by a winsome teenager named Judy Tyler, who, after several years on the show and a stint on Broadway, would go on to star Opposite Elvis Presley in JAILHOUSE ROCK before her untimely death in 1957.
The Princess wore a vaguely Native American-ish tunic and a tiara-like headpiece unknown to any tribal tradition. Her roles were, basically: singer, resident sweetie-pie, and straightwoman, and she was wildly popular, especially with little girls. After Tyler let the show, the Princess was played by a marionette.
The show was extraordinarily entertaining for its time; many of its actors, writers and musicians would go on to substantial TV careers. The constellation of puppets also contained some unforgettable characters: blowhard Phineas T Bluster, sweetly clueless Dilly-Dally, Flub-a-Dub (who was composed of a number of different animals), dapper Inspector John J. Fadoozle, and many more. The plots and situations ranged from lame to inspired, but were always full of energy, invention, and opportunities for interaction with the Peanut Gallery.
Buffalo Bob with Howdy and "Flub-a-Dub"
The WIKIPEDIA entry for the show gives a great rundown on the show’s history, and descriptions of its main characters. How else would I have ever learned, for instance, that Howdy had a stand-in known as “Double-Doody," or that “Photo Doody” was a near-stringless marionette that was used in personal appearances, photos, parades, and the famed NBC test pattern?
Or that the show’s non-televised rehearsals were renowned for including considerable double entendre dialogue between the cast members?
Or that the popularity of Howdy Doody and its Peanut Gallery led executives at at United Features Syndicate to use the name “Peanuts” for syndication of Charles Schultz’s "Li'l Folks" comic strip, a move that Schulz reportedly hated?
In time, my dad became a bit narked by our devotion to this fatuous but addictive little world, and at one point tried to convince me that I’d grow up and get tired of it.
“Never!” I fiercely declared, “I will NEVER get tired of Howdy Doody!” Dad actually had me write that down on a piece of paper and sign it, no doubt anticipating a future I-told-you-so moment, but fortunately for both of us, he either forgot about it or thought better of it.
Imagine then, the frustration Susan I felt when the show was preempted by the first broadcast of the Democratic and Republican political conventions in 1952.
Day after day we tuned in hopefully, only to find the screen full of incredibly boring black-and-white footage of white men in black suits giving speeches that all sounded alike to us. (I don’t recall any effort being, made in those days to vary the events with interviews, commentary, or explanation; it seemed like just hours of dull raw footage.)
Blowhard Phineas T. Bluster
It was either before or after this hiatus that the show played into the political theme with a mock election that ran for several weeks, with Howdy running for President of all the Boys and Girls in the United States against a mysterious opponent (who unexpectedly turned out to be one of the recurring puppet characters). It was thrilling.
Well, Susan and I did outgrow Howdy Doody, long before its final episode in 1960. After all, as studios learned the knack of programming, there was DISNEYLAND, ED SULLIVAN, TEXACO STAR THEATER with “Uncle Miltie” Berle, YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS and AMERICAN BANDSTAND, and other irresistible favorites..
The test patterns disappeared, and programs happened at all hours. We got a color TV and no more time-limit rules, though Susan and I were now too busy with school activities and homework to spend hours watching what was becoming known as the “boob tube.”
"TV time" actually became a regular evening activity in which families got together to enjoy their favorite programs. HOWDY DOODY went off the air in 1960, and receded, in spite of several attempts to revive it, into TV history.
Still, a few years ago, when I learned that my brother-in-law Phil had actually graced the Peanut Gallery several times, I found myself having to suppress a pang of retroactive jealousy. Then I started wondering whether our intense devotion to all things Doody was typical for kids of that era.
I asked for and received a Howdy Doody doll, but was disappointed that it just sat there and didn't dance or
talk.
talk.
I consulted my friend Laura Goldman, who’s about my age and grew up in New York and Maryland in the same timeline. I learned, among other things, that my Peanut-envy was nothing compared to hers.
Here’s Laura:
“When I was 4 or 5 and we were living in the Bronx, whenever there was a vacancy in our apartment building, I believed (secretly!) that Buffalo Bob Smith was going to move in with all the HOWDY DOODY characters, and I was POSITIVE that Princess Summerfall Winterspring and I were going to be best friends.
“A few years later, I was beyond excited to be chosen for the Peanut Gallery, but got chickenpox and begged my mom to put powder on my face so I could go and fake being OK. She refused, gently, but I was devastated.
"Now, in my apparent dotage, a partly decomposed "Guard Doody” puppet is grown into my garden's lower fence.”
OK, everybody sing along!
(Tune: “Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay”)
It’s Howdy Doody Time,
It’s Howdy Doody Time,
Bob Smith and Howdy, too
Say ‘Howdy-do’ to you,
Let’s give a rousing cheer
‘Cause Howdy Doody’s here,
It’s time to start the show,
So kids, let’s go!
Now try to get it out of your head; (some of us never did.)
PS: Notes from my sister Sue and brother-in-law Phil::
Sue: "I remember I was addicted to the Howdy Doody Show like it was a soap opera. If we were away and I couldn't watch it, I’d get anxious about what I was missing in the next episode.
"I wished I could I have been part of the Peanut Gallery. Little did I know that I’d marry a kid that was in the Peanut Gallery several times, I think because his sister Millie had won a local beauty contest and he was her escort. At one time we pulled up some of the old shows to see if we could find one of the shows they attended. Never did."
Phil: "I believe I was there five times, the the number of times Millie won 'Prettiest Brunette' at the Boys Club of New York.
Each time, one of the prizes was a trip to the Howdy Doody show. It got to be old hat.
"Since we didn’t have a TV, not a big deal to me."
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15. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Kemmerertown, Pennsylvania, c. 1870; Hamilton Township, Pennsylvania, 1910-1918; Easton Pennsylvania, around 1958
THE KEMMERERS GET THEIR PICTURE MADE
OK, it’s somewhere around 1870; the Civil War has been over for a few years, and the art and science of photography, refined on the battlefield, is everywhere. Everybody who’s anybody is getting a family portrait made, and the Kemmerer Family of Kemmerertown, Pennsylvania, is no exception.
There they are: my maternal great-great grandparents, Joseph Kemmerer Jr. (1826-1879) and Mary Ann Mansfield Kemmerer (1825-1880), posing with their 12 children. Joseph Jr. (in front row left of center), the very picture of a successful bourgeois, wears an expression that seems to say: “I’m wealthy enough to dress my kids in the latest (matching) fashions; what’s YOUR superpower?”
Mary Ann, to the right of him, seems both resigned and oddly youthful to have produced all these strapping children; she was only about 45 at the time of the photo, and her husband about the same age.
Although Joseph Jr. was a prosperous farmer, he came from a family known for financial wizardry. The name “Kemmerer” derives from the German “Kammer Herr,” literally “Master of the Chamber” or “Treasurer,” and the number of men with that surname who subsequently made their name in banking and finance in the US is surprising.
These include Edwin W. Kemmerer (1875-1945), possibly a distant cousin, who helped design the US Federal Reserve system and served as economic advisor to over a dozen foreign governments.G-G-Grandad Joseph was himself the great-great grandson of Johannes Nicholas Kemmerer, the eldest of three moneywise brothers who emigrated to the American Colonies from Germany’s Upper Rhine Valley in 1730.
Meanwhile, almost a century and a half later, the younger Kemmerers, including my great-grandmother Ella Sophia (at far right, still in little-girl short dresses), stare cooly at the camera with a definite air of entitlement. (Well, except for Peter, second from the left in the second row, who was “difficult” and never married.)
One thing is certain: Joseph III, Mary Ann, Peter, Ida Salora, Jerome, Anna Lucinda, Charles, Jacob, Catherine, John, and little Ella Sophia certainly knew where their next meal was coming from. (Thanks to fellow Kemmerer descendant Robert Ralph Arnts for the historical information.)
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| Ella Sophia all grown up, with husband John Wilhelm and daughters Cora and Clara. |
2....and a hilarious postscript from another Kemmerer Descendant, Jocelyn Clark (by way of Cousin Betsy Jones Ryan) “A copy of this photo hung in our Stroudsburg house. We crazy Clarks added a script that went something like this: ‘P-U! Who did it?’ ‘Not me!’ ‘Wasn’t me either!’ ‘Don’t look at me!’ The mother (the one with the relieved look): ‘Ahhh... !’”
3. The Kemmerer brothers, sons of Charles and Eliza Metzgar Kemmerer of Hamilton Township, Pennsylvania, performed with the Cherry Valley Band from approximately 1910 to 1918. Pictured from left are Allen, Edwin, Theodore, and Frank Kemmerer.
According to Cousin Bob, these horny guys are our first cousins twice re moved. According to genealogy sites. a cousin who is “twice removed” will be your cousin's grandchild or grandparent, or your grandparent's cousin. Got it?
The serious bandsters are most probably the progeny of that equally serious fellow standing on the right end of the second row of the Kemmerer family portrait above, with his hand on my Great-Grandmother Ella Sophia’s shoulder.
You can see traces of the Kemmerer looks on the group photo of Ella Sophia’s daughter (second from right, second row, and ten grandchildren, but personally, I never saw any in myself.
Front: Janet, Margery, Roberta (Bobbie)
That is, until I came upon these two photo-booth shots,
reminiscence in the key of DNA.
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16. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Somewhere in Western Sonoma County in the past 40 years; Sebastopol, California, May 2024
Things Found in Old Envelopes #16
THE TALE OF EGG
Their odd rhythm got stick in my head, however, so in the most recent collage sessions with my young friend Anya, I decided to try to create illustrations for Egg and his adventures.
Whether I succeeded or not is, of course, a matter of a pinion.
EGG
That pale bird that tweaks the corner of your eye,
Should you follow it from one corner of the sky
To the other, where the cloudscape’s torn
By mountains twice as strange as they are high
Into streams and tatters of escaping light,
Then, should you, hovering, spy
Down from that great height
There you would see Egg, waiting to be born,
With his patient yolk and his nervous white,
Busy, bland, a little bit absurd,
Knitting themselves a bird.
“I hate this part,” Egg mutters to his shell,
“This business of the bird I’m bound to be,
Am I loon or lark or noble nightingale?
Rook or wren or rattling chickadee?
Am I hen or hawk or hummingbird at heart?
I hate this part.”
Now, Egg has time to pass, and in his drowse,
Smothered in breast-feathers to his eyes,
His dreams begin to stir and preen and rouse,
Take on ambitious plumage as they rise
And, lifting in enchantment from the boughs,
They wing his heart astonished through the skies,
Egg, trapped in thick entangling nets of sleep,
Bobs, thin-shelled and foolish, in their wake,
Through shredded clouds to far-encircling peaks,
Whipped by gale-winds, he balloons and squeaks,
Until, too much afraid to fear, he leaps
And tries the borrowed glories of those wings
And, believing he can soar,
He sings.
And each time, as the fears release his mind,
The dream-wings flap and fling him from the sky,
And every time he falls without a sound
In painful slowness, as dreams tend to die,
And every time, before he strikes the ground,
His bursting shell achieves an apogee,
And something in him knits and splits and flies,
Golden as time, white as eternity.
(Thus hearts are born each moment from their fears,
And pale birds born each moment to the skies.)
Poor Egg, still nested dreaming on his bough,
Looks down, each time it seems, from greater heights,
And sees, of course, only his shattered shell,
“Oh, hell!” he thinks, and, then again “Oh, well.”
Egg shudders in his sleep; he always forgets
This part, or he would never begin again,
Luckily, it’s not left up to him.
So we leave him to his knitting and his dreams,
Questioning and swaddled in his nest,
His future less uncertain than it seems,
His unborn present beating in his breast,
His yolk uniting sweetly with his white,
His heart unhatched in golden dreams of flight.
17. THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco, California; 1969-1970
MEME NOT MIME
Or,
THE MANY FACES OF R.G. DAVIS
Recently, I read Percival Everett’s brilliant book JAMES, a re-telling of Mark Twain’s HUCKLEBERRY FINN as narrated by Jim, the slave who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi on a makeshift raft. Beautifully crafted, JAMES somehow manages to combine the unspeakable cruelties of slavery with hilarious comic moments.
In one situation, for instance, Jim, who has a lovely tenor voice, is purchased by the white manager of a traveling whites-in-blackface minstrel show that has suddenly lost its tenor. In this wry narrative twist, Jim suddenly finds himself playing the role of a Black man playing a White man playing a Black man.
This riff took me back to 1966, when I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin. One fall evening, I was asked by a guy I barely knew if I wanted to go to a theater event put on by the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Like most other Americans, I knew little or nothing about mime, except for the occasional appearance of Marcel Marceau on the ED SULLIVAN SHOW, but I thought, sure, why not?
The title of the presentation was THE MINSTREL SHOW, OR, CIVIL RIGHTS IN A CRACKER BARREL. It was not at all silent, and was performed by six tuxedoed and white-gloved men in blackface and golliwog wigs, their mouths and eyes outlined in exaggerated white circles. (For those unfamiliar with this dubious art-form, its “blackface” roles were most often played by White men.)
The group was accompanied by two White musicians, as well as a White MC, in a role traditionally known as “Mr. Interlocuter.” There were all the traditional blackface figures, Tambo and Mr. Bones and Jim Crow, etc. speaking in an exaggerated “Negro Dialect.”
From the excellent Wikipedia article on the subject:“Minstrel shows stereotyped blacks as dimwitted, lazy, buffoonish, cowardly, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky. Each show consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music performances that depicted people specifically of African descent.”
It was only after the performance started, and I began to notice the wickedly sly send-ups of racist attitudes hidden within the classic minstrel-show tropes, that I realized what a brilliant piece of theater this was. The gags got funnier and funnier, and more and more incisive and shameless, until my stomach hurt from laughing.
One of my favorite moments came at the standing-ovation curtain call, when the blackface minstrels strolled to the front of the stage and solemnly removed their gloves, revealing that several of them were—Black guys pretending to be White guys pretending to be Black guys.
Afterwards, my date said, “I don’t get it. Was that supposed to be funny?” (That was our last date), but many other audience members were clustered outside in the chilly night, energetically discussing and debating the topics raised by the performance.
Wow, I thought, THAT’s theater.
(By the way, in case you’re confused by their name, the Mime Troupe started out in the late 1950s performing classical mime, but moved on to commedia dell’arte and then into spoken-word productions. Their original name —with “Mime” pronounced European-style as “Meem”—stayed with them.)
Fast-forward to some point in 1969. I’d just finished my M.A., and was reveling in my freedom from academia, when I happened to see an announcement that the San Francisco Mime Troupe was holding auditions. Aha, I thought, that might be an interesting adventure, and perhaps a useful story for my budding freelance journalistic career.
At that point, I have to say, I’d never actually seen a SF Mime Troupe performance other than their MINSTREL SHOW tour de force. I had, however, seen newspaper accounts of the troupe/ being busted by the SFPD on charges ranging from performing in parks without a permit to actual obscenity/indecency in the eyes of the law.
Note: The fellow being rousted in the front is not Mime Troupe founder R.G. Davis, who can be seen at right in white between two arresting officers.
Even so, I had no idea of the in-your-face-ballsiness and toughness generally required of the women in the troupe, so I wrote myself what I thought was a clever little monologue, and showed up at the former church where auditions were being held.
Me, around that time
There I found a bare stage with members of the troupe ranged in front of it. All the attention in the room, however, seemed to be held by one guy—aloof, good-looking, charismatic and poker-faced.
0
R.G. Davis
Each time one hopeful after another finished his/her performance, all the eyes of those in the know would go to this fellow, waiting for a slight nod or headshake. (All auditioners were dismissed by another member with a simple “Thank you; we have your information.”)
After I’d done my bit, feeling a little like a cheerleader who’d wandered into a dog-eat-dog method-acting seminar, I wasn’t surprised by the tiny negative headshake. Though the audition process was fascinating to watch, I got up to leave, but just then an organizer-type guy came up to me and whispered: “R.G. would like you to stay until we’re finished.” What? They’d suddenly realized they needed a vapid ingénue to play off of? Curious, I waited.
After everyone else had left, “R.G.” beckoned me over. I had meanwhile realized that this guy was none other than the SF Mime Troupe’s co-founder and artistic director, Ronald G. Davis, performer in (and co-creator/director of) the traveling show that had wowed me in 1966.
The abandoned church/audition hall
“Did you write that monologue?” he inquired in a classic Brooklyn accent, ”It wasn’t bad. But you DO know you can’t act worth sh*t?”
“I guess I do now,” I said.“
Good,” he said, “So, you want to go to dinner?” I was startled and intrigued enough to say yes.
(I should state here for the record that, whatever the original motive, this did not turn out to be a casting-couch situation; I never had anything to do with the Mime Troupe after that, although I did get them a little ROLLING STONE coverage later on.)
OK, from the University of California at Berkeley archives, this is whom I said yes to:
**********
“Ronald G. Davis was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 9, 1933. He graduated from the University of New Mexico with a degree in economics in 1955.
“During the next several years, Davis gained an extensive performing-arts background that included classes in modern dance, and attendance at the American Mime Studio in New York where he studied under Paul Curtis. Subsequently, in 1957, he received a Fulbright scholarship to study under Etienne Decroux at L'Ecole de Mime in Paris.
R.G. Davis as a baby mime in Paris.
“In 1959, Davis settled in San Francisco, where he joined the Actors Workshop as an assistant director. He soon formed the R. G. Davis Mime Troupe, and, under the auspices of the Workshop, presented conventional mime shows in the tradition of Chaplin and improvised performances called ‘events.’
“Later, his commitment to reach a broader audience led to his producing free outdoor performances in the San Francisco parks. He chose the commedia dell' arte style for these performances.
“In 1963, Davis and others left the Actors Workshop, to form a company called the San Francisco Mime Troupe. He was seeking an alternative to commercial, subsidized theater and a style to treat serious, current issues and to express his radical politics which over the decade evolved from avant-garde and counterculture to more specifically Marxist.
Early Mime Troupe
“Davis wanted his theater to be a catalyst for social change, and in 1966 he coined the term “Guerrilla Theatre” in an article describing the Troupe's work. He maintained that theater in the U.S. should teach, direct toward change, and be an example of change.
“The Mime Troupe's style has been described as ‘presentational, broadly comic, mixing traditional mime, commedia and Brechtian techniques.’ Among other forms developed by the troupe were the minstrel show, vaudeville, circus techniques, puppet shows, melodrama, and band music."
.”***********************
Over dinner, during which we established that I was not entirely a naïve airhead, and he was not entirely an arrogant a-hole, Ronnie Davis and I began an unlikely friendship. We were like two different species; I was ROLLING STONE-Haight-Ashbury-Renaissance Faire; he was theater-purist-Marxist-heavily-political. One reason that our friendship took off was that from the first I good-naturedly refused to discuss politics or engage in political argument with him, and he was intrigued enough by this to stop trying.
When pried from his polemic shell, and faced with someone who had nothing to do with his role as Mime-Troupe Guerilla-Theater Big Cheese, he became, not R. G., but Ronnie—brilliant, funny, charming, kind of a sweetheart, and definitely somewhat of a rascal. We discovered tastes in common—films, various cuisines, literary genres, art—and never seemed to run out of things to talk about.
Ronnie
Before long, I wound up playing an interesting role in Ronnie/R.G.’s sociopolitical life.At that time, it had become fashionable among SF’s social elite to season their parties with a frisson of the exotic—that is, individuals rendered quasi-glamorous by their slightly disreputable, or at least slightly fringe-of-society status.
At such a bash, one might meet Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver; Yippie Abbie Hoffman; the Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick; Beat poets such as Allan Ginsburg or Lawrence Ferlinghetti; outrageous restaurateur Magnolia Thunderpussy; rock impresario (and former Mime Troupe manager) Bill Graham; noted SF madam Margo St. James, and/or, on certain occasions, street-theater rebel R.G.
Davis. Ronnie found these occasions great for networking, but there was one drawback for a fastidious guy not given to casual hookups: unattached men with exotic reputations were frequently targeted, even stalked at these affairs by certain overprivileged women looking for, shall we say, a walk on the wild side.
So it was, for a brief stretch, that I became Ronnie’s “protection.”
We’d attend a party, stay together long enough to establish us as a couple, then he’d turn up the R.G. persona and slope off to work the room, and I would invariably find interesting people to talk to. (If targeted by a predatoress, he’d casually circle back to me.)
This worked like a charm, and I got to have many interesting conversations with quasi-notorious people. One of my most lasting memories, however, is of a woman who walked up to me and asked abruptly: “Are you somebody?” “Not yet,” I replied, whereupon she just as abruptly turned her back and walked away.
Then, in 1970, due to conflicts concerning focus, ideology, and organization, Ronnie left (or was ousted by) the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which continued performing as a collective.
Ronnie was, of course, angry, hurt and bitter. In response, he went haring off to Mao’s China, at a time when only the boldest—or craziest—westerners did that. When he returned, it was in yet another role, one that required wearing the requisite dark-blue padded jacket and Mao cap, and quoting from The Great Leader’s “Little Red Book.” (In a moment somehow typical, however, he opened his drab jacket to show me that he’d had it custom-lined with rose-colored silk damask.)
R.G. was back, and, not being any more of a fan of Maoist ideology than I had been of Marxist polemics, that was the last time I saw that complicated man in person.
I do know from online sources that he soon ditched the Mao togs, turned to scholarship, published two books (as R.G.) , METHOD IN MIME, and THE SAN FRANCISCO MIME TROUPE: THE FIRST TEN YEARS; taught theater and movement classes, produced some street theater, and earned a Ph.D. in theater and ecology at UC Berkeley.
In a series of YouTube videos made in 2013, when he was 80, he appears as an almost fey senior citizen (“I go by ‘Ron’ now.”), tootling on a recorder and gently baiting his interviewers. He’s scholarly, irascible, and entertaining as he talks and ad-libs about the old days.
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| Ron Davis at 85 |
Ron is 91 now, and, fences mended, sits on the board of the Mime Troupe he started so many years ago. Which is, by the way, still together, and has gone on to receive many local and national awards, including three OBIEs, and a special Tony Award for Excellence in Regional Theater.
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18. THROWBACK THURSDAY: AMERICA’S GOT TALENT, New York City 2014; FRANCE’S GOT TALENT, Paris France, 2017; All over the World; Sebastopol, California, 2024
THRIFT-STORE SERENDIPITY: A POSTCARD FROM PARIS
Or, FLYING HIGH WITH ABIGAIL
As I’ve learned from doing this for years, only about one-half to two-thirds of these are salable. (FYI, those that aren’t include: multiple freebies from charitable organizations; failed do-it-yourself attempts; and sad collections stored in moldy attics or damp garages for so long that they’re smelly and stuck together.)
Me with the postcard in question.
Another reason for un-sale-ability is simply that the cards have already been written on. Recently, I discovered such a card, and decided to save the lovely image on it (see below) as possible collage material.
When I got home and read the message printed tidily on the other side, however, I tumbled headlong into a mystery:
“Bonjour Elaine,” (it began).
"Aerial Animations made it to Paris!
It’s been an adventure. We arrived
on August 27th and spent the next
day training at Noctombules, a friendly
circus school in a small tent just
outside of Paris. On the morning of the
29th we got up very early and headed
into the theatre for a high-stakes tech
rehearsal at 8 AM. Everyone was very
positive and supportive but the competitive
energy could not be ignored. I can’t yet
share how it went—but I can say I let out
a spontaneous ‘who-hoo!’ as I rode my
animated horse into the sunrise. Soon I
start the next adventure. Thanks for your support.
Love,
Abigail"
Of course I immediately had to Google “Aerial Animations,” and thereby discovered the amazing world of Abigail Baird.
Abigail
Abigail aloft, pursued by a bear.
The Texas native has come a long way since then. The best way to describe what Abigail does for a living is just to see it, for instance as displayed on AMERICA’S GOT TALENT in 2014:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9ktu_nXl3Y (Abigail Baird/America’s Got Talent quarterfinals/2014)
She made it to the semifinals, and the previous mesmerizing performances seem pretty basic when compared with videos of her later shows, such as the semifinals of FRANCE HAS INCREDIBLE TALENT in 2017:
Here, in brief, is Abigail Baird’s early acrobatic journey:
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2003: graduated from the College of Santa Fe (NM) with a self-designed Bachelors of Arts focused in puppet sculpting and technical theatre.
2004: Moved to Vermont as the Technical Director for Sandglass Theatre.
2004-2005 Worked on the creation and tour of BETWEEN SAND AND STARS, a multidiscipline puppet and aerial performance.
2005-2007: Focused heavily on aerial and acrobatic training while teaching at The New England Center for Circus Arts. September,
2007: Moved to Bristol, England to incorporate physical theatre with circus at Circomdeia.2008: Begins experimenting with the “Aerial Animation” concept.
2009: Began performing, touring and teaching with Wise Fool New Mexico.
************************
Little by little, she became more enchanted with the “Aerial Animation” concept, which she developed in tandem with a cartoonist friend, Matthew Melis.
Matthew Melis
That concept has since taken her to Rockefeller Center, Las Vegas, and circus venues worldwide, traveling with her 20-foot-tall rig for aerial acrobatics, and a stage/projection crew.
Abigail with the guy who anchors her for scenes like the one below.
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So, back to the postcard in question. It’s undated, but was probably written in 2017, on the eve of her FRANCE HAS INCREDIBLE TALENT performance. She seems to have used different routines for the initial audition, quarterfinals and semifinals, but the “animated horse into the sunset” appears in this 2015 performance in Dubai. |
https://www.gigsalad.com/aerial_animation_san_francisco (For Cartoon Network in Dubai 2015)
And you’ll no doubt be glad to hear that Abigail, now in her 40s, is still at it. In 2024, she received a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Connecticut, and debuted an hour-long show called NOTHING REALLY MATTERS, with Abigail still flying around up in the air, working with long-time partner Matthew Melis and her brother Zac Baird, who composed the music. A full article about the show can be found at:
I know you're not supposed to read her people's mail, but had I not, I'd have missed an entire magical world, encapsulated in a note dashed off on the back of a postcard from Paris.
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BOOKABLE PERFORMANCES (from the Aerial Animations website):
Aerial Animation
NOTHING REALLY MATTERS
Stop-Motion Animation Fabrication and Editing
Puppetry Performance and Construction
Producing, Directing & Movement Directing
Alexandria Craig, the beloved granddaughter of my friend Faith Petric.
PS: Some years ago, I learned from Alexandria Craig, an actual circus performer who appeared on BRITAIN’S GOT TALENT, that it was at one time the practice of the producers to bring circus acts into the mix as variety between all the singers and dancers. These acts got their expenses paid, some small remuneration and lots of TV exposure, but none was allowed to win. Here's Alex's performance, in which she manages to make (more of) an ass of Piers Morgan.
19. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania; 1940s-1950s; Booneville, Arkansas, Sometime after 1906
BEST WISHES TO MRS. HILL: THE COWBOY AND THE SCHOOLMARM
As I’ve written here before, my dad’s mother, Clara Maud Elkins Hill, was not exactly a cozy grandma. To her grandchildren, she was not “Nana” or “Mimi” or “Meemaw,” or even “Grammy,” but always, in full, “Grandmother Hill.”
I met her precisely twice, once in 1946 as a cranky toddler (see photo), and again during a 1954 visit (during which I said a dutiful thank-you for the book of Bible stories she brought me, and then, aside from a few posed photos, made myself scarce whenever possible).
My sister Susan, then a sensitive child barely into her teens, later confessed that, following Grandmother Hill’s passing in 1956, she imagined for years that the old woman was sitting up in Heaven, judging her every act and thought.
Looking quite grandmotherly: I'm on the left in pigtails, Susan on the right, brother David with croquet mallet.
Clara Hill was actually quite lovely in her youth, and an admirable, though strait-laced, woman. She had gone to teachers’ college, and her income from teaching school, sewing, and making ladies’ discarded hair into “transformations” (extensions), was especially necessary after her 1906 marriage to my granddad Carlton Hill, apparently a man of light heart, good intentions, considerable charm, and the chronic inability to settle down in one job for long.
1906 wedding photo of Clara and Carlton Hill
Clara raised three rambunctious boys pretty much on her own, while Carlton jumped from job to job—farming, carpentry, oil-field prospector, clothing-store clerk—hoping to strike it rich, or at least achieve prosperity—finally finding his niche as a traveling salesman.
(My cousin Wayne Hill, our family historian, opines that this worked out so well because it got my freewheeling granddad out from under the exacting scrutiny of his spouse for weeks at a time.)
My dad adored his mother, and, although he never said an unkind word about her, I think even he might have realized that she wasn’t, well, the life of the party
Except…
Cousin Wayne, rummaging through some of Clara’s papers, found something inexplicable: a photo of one Slim Rhodes, a handsome country-music singer dude, autographed with “Best Wishes” to “Mrs. Hill.”
Neither Wayne nor I could imagine the staid and severe woman we’d known doing anything so kittenish as attending a “hillbilly music” concert—just look at the titles on the records below—much less obtaining an autographed photo from one of the singers.
It’s possible that my grandfather brought it back from one of his sales trips, but to what purpose? A peace offering? A love token? A joke? If the last, why would she keep it to her dying day?
I prefer to think that, at least once in her sedate life Grandmother Hill kicked up her heels a little, snuck out to a forbidden concert, and solicited an autograph and a smile from a handsome cowboy.
Or, as Cousin Wayne put it: “Woo-hoo, Granny!!!”
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FYI: Ethmer Cletus "Slim" Rhodes was an American country music and rockabilly guitarist and vocalist popular during the 1940s and 50s with his band, Slim Rhodes and His Log Cabin Mountaineers (later just “Mountaineers”).
Slim and the Mountaineers
They were recorded by Sun Records, the company that would later present Elvis Presley to the world.
https://sunrecords.com/artists/slim-rhodes (About the band)
(Slim Rhodes/Romp and Stomp/Sun Records/2:18)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwZLzn83L7o (Slim Rhodes/The House of Sin/Sun Records/2:42)
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20. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Paradise Valley, Arizona; 2010 – Present
SEE HOW THEY GROW: 14 YEARS OF CUTE
My niece-in-law Stephanie Cook Richards is, among many other pursuits, an avid photographer and a busy mom. What could be more natural than combining these two activities?
Cami is a triple-threat actor/singer/dancer, and Tre an impressive athlete; they also enjoy many of the same activities—and, if these radiant photos are any indication, each other’s company.
Auntie Amie with Cameron
With a young friend
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