Jane Arden, sportswoman, 1939

I posted this one three years ago, but couldn't resist reposting. (And couldn't find the Dolly Dingle paper doll with a tennis racket!) I can see the tennis and ice skating outfits, but less sure about the red suit and the outfit with one striped stocking. Hmmmm..... Maybe roller derby?

This paper doll is from an April 1939 newspaper, the year all hell broke loose in the world. Burt Bacharach was 11 years old. Hal David, who would one day become his lyricist, was 18. Maybe they were humming, "what the world needs now, is love, sweet love..."  They put it all together in 1965:




Click the Sepia Saturday logo (featuring Dinah Shore and Bacharach) for a nice return:

Rockaway Playland, 1957

That's my Uncle Joe with my two sisters on the Ferris wheel. Where was I?

Too little for the Ferris wheel! So Uncle Joe was kind enough to take me on something more suitable. But you could see I was thrilled to be on this train ride. This might have been the caterpillar ride, where a huge awning rose up from the last car and covered the riders.  Everytime my sisters and I took this photo out when I was growing up, it was, oh, the caterpillar ride, so I'm sticking with that story. I think this is Rockaway Playland, in Queens. It was kind of threadbare compared to Coney Island. We didn't have a car, so it had to be reachable by subway. The A train from Columbus Circle would have taken us straight out to Rockaway.

More youthful amusements at the shore: me, my sister Elaine, and cousin George waiting to look through a telescope. Coney? Rockaway? Orchard Beach in the Bronx? It could have been anywhere on the subway line. Although we did make it out to Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey, probably by bus or a relative who had a car. About 1960.

This one is easy: the sprinklers at Central Park. Our favorite thing to do on a hot summer weekend. And we could walk there from home. That's me in red, Elaine and Maria. Elaine has on her two piece bathing suit commemorating the 1964-1965 World's Fair, so that helps date the picture.

And here's my mom on a carousel. Sometime in the 1970s or 1980s. We had a car and were driving all over by then. This is probably Great Adventure in New Jersey.

 But back to Ferris wheels...

Wonder Wheel, Coney Island, August 2009. I love that ride.

See who else is going around this Sepia Saturday, click below.

Kittens in boots

I must have posted this one way back, but couldn't resist posting it for this Sepia Saturday theme.  How often do we resole or repair shoes these days? We don't wear many things out, do we. I remember as a teenager always putting small taps on the toe and heel of new shoes, to make the sole last longer. Haven't done that in years.

See what other Sepia Saturday participants are purring about, click below:

Tea time

Who among us has not poured a cup of tea for a favorite doll or teddy bear? A colorful scrap from the 1920s or 1930s, I imagine, since it is marked simply "Printed in Germany."

Tea time is one of the best ways to play at being a grown up: you're hosting a party, tending to your guests, thinking up congenial conversation, and holding a teacup just so.

It's hard to think of tea and not think of England. Here's the Queen Mother and King George VI with their daughters Margaret Rose and Elizabeth -- who of course just celebrated her Diamond Jubilee, 60 years on the throne. This is a postcard I found many years ago, unused and undated.

Some favorite writing paper; the flip side has fainter images than these, and makes a lovely background for a letter.

Check out Sepia Saturday to see what others are brewing from this week's theme:

Gangs of New York, c. 1964

We don't need no stinkin' May Pole!  We're the Jets, we're famous!

Actually we were project girls --Amsterdam Houses  in New York City.  This is the section of the housing project closer to West End Ave. The top photo was taken in the playground we called The Boats and Barrels because that's what it featured for us to scamper around on, plus sliding pond and  monkey bars, without that thick padding underneath that kids get today. The bottom two pictures were taken in The Little Park, right in front of the Boats and Barrels.

We were very confused project girls. We loved "West Side Story," and we identified with the Jets. But every girl in this picture has Puerto Rican or Mexican or Cuban heritage! Our mothers all spoke Spanish at home. Huh? What can I say, I think it was the song that did it, you know "When you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way from your first cigarette to your last dyin' day." As I got older,  I saw "West Side Story" with fresh eyes and realized that more than anything else I wanted to be Anita, dancing like crazy on a tenement rooftop. Or at least Rita Moreno playing Anita.

That's me with the poor fitting spring coat and baggy pants-- as the youngest, I got the hand- me-downs from two older sisters.  (I changed to tights and Mary Janes in the last picture, with jump rope slung over my shoulder--don't mess with me, pal). My sister Maria is the tall girl with skinny jeans and ski jacket. My sister Elaine probably took this picture with her Brownie camera. Most of the girls in this picture I'm now in touch with via Facebook.

Click below to see who else is gathering around the May Pole theme...

Stanley's garden, 2005

This 2005 postcard was an invitation to celebrate the 100th birthday of the poet Stanley Kunitz, at Poets House, which he helped establish. I'd heard Kunitz read at the Dodge Poetry Festival, and picked up a couple of his books. Kunitz (1905-2006) was also a gardener, according to Wikipedia:

Kunitz divided his time between New York City and Provincetown, Massachusetts, for most of his life. He enjoyed gardening and maintained one of the most impressive seaside gardens in Provincetown. He was a founder of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he was a mainstay of the literary community, and of Poets House in Manhattan.

I'm assuming this photo of Kunitz was taken in his Provincetown garden. The photo, by Marnie Crawford Samuelson, is from his last book, "The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden."

Here is a poem from his 1995 collection, "Passing Through." 

Touch Me

Summer is late, my heart.
Words plucked out of the air
some forty years ago
when I was wild with love
and torn almost in two
scatter like leaves this night
of whistling wind and rain.
It is my heart that's late,
it is my song that's flown.
Outdoors all afternoon
under a gunmetal sky
staking my garden down,
I kneeled to the crickets trilling
underfoot as if about
to burst from their crusty shells;
and like a child again
marveled to hear so clear
and brave a music pour
from such a small machine.
What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.
One season only,
                          and it's done.
So let the battered old willow
thrash against the windowpanes
and the house timbers creak.
Darling, do you remember
the man you married? Touch me,
remind me who I am.

Passing Through:
The Later Poems, New and Selected
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Flying

Peter Pan, 1960. Mary Martin. My all time favorite childhood fairytale-TV special-Peter Pan actor.

It is my heartfelt belief that the best portrayals of Peter Pan have been by women, and they have delivered a not- so -secret message to girls everywhere through the years-- about freedom and possibility.

Take wing, click below.

The New York Public Library

One of my favorite stories of New York City history is that the Croton Reservoir once stood on the site of the 42nd Street library.

The reservoir was opened in 1842 as an above ground, man-made lake, holding 20 million gallons of water. It became a place for people to promenade.

There was a walkway on top of it. Edgar Allan Poe enjoyed strolling around the massive structure. In 1853, right behind the reservoir, The Crystal Palace was erected for an exhibition on what is now Bryant Park. The reservoir was no longer needed by the 1890s, and was torn down.

In 1911, the library officially opened. It is a great and beautiful building. Wikipedia informs that some of the reservoir's original foundation can be found in the South Court of the library. I'll have to look for it next time I'm there.

These early images of reservoir and library are taken from the New York Public Library Digital Archive.

The research room in 2006. Photo by David Iliff. Changes are pending in the beloved library. Will stacks of books be removed to open more of this glorious space to the public? Will it lose the peace and quiet and easy access to a deep archive that attracts scholars and researchers? After reading this article in The Nation, I am worried.

One of my childhood treasures.

Be sure to browse the other pages of Sepia Saturday; click below.

At work at the Times

My father, far left in this picture, was a printer at the New York Times for 46 years. Above, setting hot type, Dec. 18, 1976. The transition to cold type was just about to happen, I believe. People wanted to memorialize the old way of doing things with photos. The printers had a great union, the International Typographical Union, Big 6 was his chapter. Jobs were lost through attrition; no one was fired as automation streamlined jobs that once took many men to accomplish.

Above, laying out the sports page in October 1986, when the New York Mets won the World Series. My father loved his job, and his union. It's what gave my family a foothold in the middle-class.

The Times was my father's second family. In one of those amazing twists of fate, my husband works at the Times now. My father would have been proud. It's still the best newspaper in the world, as far as I am concerned.

I work for a newspaper too, and labor history means a lot to me. And the struggles of working people in other countries.

In Nov. 1988, I was on assignment in Chile for the Ford Foundation and took this picture. A demonstration had been organized by the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores. The men are holding a sign that reads: "We are workers, not slaves. No more miserable wages of 14,080 pesos." That amount was  equivalent to about $56 a month.

I was glad to hear the president of Apple visited Foxconn. Will it make a difference in the lives of workers who work long, tedious hours for little pay constructing our iPhones and iPads? I hope so.

Meanwhile, May 1 is coming up. I hear interesting things will be happening that day.

Click below to read more about working people.

Dressing up for Coney Island

I'm always amazed at how people once dressed up for places like the amusement park at Coney Island, in the years before sportswear became the default choice for everyday wear. I remember as a child wearing a nice dress for an airplane trip. Now you can count on people wearing shorts and flip flops to Coney Island, on a plane or even at the theater. Theater is my my personal last stand. I still get dressed for a Broadway show. I'm not talking fancy. Just nice.

The folks in this picture are wearing suits, hats and one woman has a nice fur collar. So perhaps this was not yet summer, or maybe it was an evening out. Just by the way they're dressed you can sense the anticipation and expectations they had for the evening. It was clearly date night, and chances are the night started elsewhere.  Did they end up on the Staten Island Ferry? I hope so--that would be a classic New York night out for couples.

This bar is clearly a faux setting; click on the picture to see just how cheap the bar backdrop is. I always get a kick out of these pasteboard settings. I first posted this picture nearly three years ago; it was the first thing I thought of when considering the dressing up theme. The back is marked "Butch & Icki & his goils friend's." That's the Brooklyn I know and love.

You can see how others dress up this theme over at Sepia Saturday; click below.

Girl Scouts, 1939

From the New York Public Library Digital Archive: A photo from the 1939-1940 World's Fair, titled "Denmark Participation." Girl and Boy Scouts greet Prince Frederik and Princess Ingrid, according to the archive notes, but Frederik must have been touring elsewhere on the grounds. And that must be the princess front and center, wearing a stylish hat, cocked just so.  This link and photograph indicates the visit to New York by the royal couple occurred in May 1939.

History shadows this photograph. All hell was breaking loose in Europe, and the Nazis would occupy Denmark April 9, 1940. Wikipedia says Danish leaders in 2003 finally acknowledged that Denmark's cooperation with the Nazis was "morally unjustifiable." However it's good to remember that, to its everlasting credit, Denmark refused to enact anti-Semitic laws or round up their Jewish population despite their occupiers' insistence.  History is complicated, no? I could use a box of Thin Mints right now.

You can scout out other interesting tales at Sepia Saturday; click below.

Hair coloring ads, 1936

Don't believe for a minute that women didn't strive for a youthful appearance even back in the days before Botox and plastic surgery became commonplace. These ads all come from the 1936 edition of Radio Stars. I was surprised at all the hair coloring ads; these are the ones I had time to scan in.

Women with straight hair want curly; curly heads like me usually want straight. In the 1960s, I tried a product called Curl Free with some success. In the 1930s, my thick wavy hair would have been the bee's knees.

Barbo! Coloring the gray at home is not something I would try.

Hey, bay rum in Barbo? What's that about.

An illustration of radio star Jessica Dragonette on the cover of the magazine. Artist Earl Christy captured the lovely waves in her au courant hair style.

You can comb through the other entries for Sepia Saturday by clicking the logo below.