Domestic Cats - That we now have and the ones that are gone.
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Born in Arcadia, Michigan in 1875, she became (in 1910) the first woman to earn a pilot's license. Afterward she was a headliner in air shows and races across the world. In early 1912, she was the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
She also was a screenwriter for quite a few of D. W. Griffith's early short films.
She died later in 1912 in an air accident at an air show in Boston, MA.
Quimby Road, San Jose, California
Every time a year comes to an end, I review al the images I made the past 12 months and pick my favorite ten. Most of the time, an images makes it on the list because of the experience I had when making it.
My latest weblog has all ten of them: www.stefanbaeurle.com/Blog/Top-10-Favorites-of-2022
The email from Lord Quimby was brief. “I MUST SEE YOU IMMEDIATELY!”
James Franklin Somerset Quimby IV was, in fact, a real English lord, even listed in the second to last publication of Burke’s Peerage in 1969.
Single and bored with England, he moved to America and became a US citizen.
He shared a May 19 birthday with Malcolm X for which he would tell people more than once after he had a few too many. Yet he had never actually known nor respected any Black person.
Now this friend of many years was urgently summoning me.
I say friend, it was never the same after he threw an unopened bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin at me after I questioned his musical preference for Baroque organ music.
A closeted gay man who affected bright blue-dyed ostrich skin cowboy boots in public but soft Ferragamo slippers at home he hosted lavish parties for insipid Republican candidates but always voted Democrat.
Now I was in his home again, standing too close to him in his kitchen, as he said, “As you know, we have been dear friends and traveling companions for quite a long time, perhaps too long in spite of our shared history and past fondness for one another.”
Where was he going with this?
“Over the last fortnight I have started to reduce my list of friends to something more manageable. And that is why I wanted to see you in person, mon ami, to tell you that I never want to see nor hear from you ever again. Please see yourself out.”
Not a Casablanca ending but not unwelcome either.
And that was that. “Omnia Temporaria sunt “. All things are temporary.
Actually, catnip is delicious, which is what PJ Harvey was licking in this moment (there are bits of catnip all around here, too)
I am a big fan of the old vintage feeling of cracking open a good book but I did donate a lot of my old books and I am buying most books on Kindle with the exception of graphic novels, which really don't translate well to that format in my experience. Graphic novels are what I read in the bathtub at the end of a long day, ether sipping sake or Japanese whiskey and with lots and lots of bubbles around me. If that sounds decadent, it is because it absolutely is. But, I have chronic muscle cramps, anxiety, and depression and this is my personal therapy.
So, on to the book recommendations by my stack from yesterday's photos separated into two parts. I bought these books primarily at Quimby's in Chicago, a comic book store that I am worried about now that it is closed because of the citywide mandate for quarantine and "shelter in place." Bookstores are not considered an essential business to stay open at this time and, truthfully, I also wouldn't want to risk the lives of the workers, but I do personally view books as essential just as I view the book loving geeks who enjoy reading them.
The Drifting Classroom by Kazuo Umezz is about a school that disappears into some time into the future. The communication between time zones is nearly impossible except for our protagonist hero being able to scream through time and connect with his mother occasionally.
The first Volume is really mainly centered on the way the adults and children handle this crisis and the psychological and physical violence that results as well as typical things like food and water scarcity and then a giant bug monster, which comes about at the end.
The second Volume is more about stopping nightmares that come to life. bizarre mushrooms that start growing on everything, and a plague that separates the children even more. The children are exploring this new desert land and trying to find anything sustainable and they end up finding other surprises.
www.viz.com/drifting-classroom
I've also been reading quite a bit of Junji Ito's graphic novels lately. I'm in the middle of Tomie right now, which I have mixed feelings about. I love the concept of a woman who never dies even when she is brutally murdered by men over and over again. What is difficult for me to read is the fact that she obsesses about men not worth her while and gets very jealous of other girls. Seems like she could be using her time after regenerating all over again a lot better.
The novel by Ito that I liked even better was Uzumaki because I really get into psychological dramas where the enemy is actually a force of nature..in this case spirals that consume everything in this small Japanese town from the wavelengths in the area to people's biological physical spaces (semicircular canals, fingerprints). This one is well worth reading and one I will likely re-read quite a few times.
Also worth a read is No Longer Human which is an adaptation of the same novel by Osamu Dazai. This is at least somewhat based on the author's life and his own psychological distress (Dazai's) and is really frightening in the sense of human choices and the portrayal of a man without a conscience and the way he treats others, especially women.
www.comicsbeat.com/review-no-longer-human-junji-ito/
On more of a fun side is Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu. This is the very slim graphic novel on top and, although it is still a manga that features some bits of horror, it is far more tongue and cheek and shows how Ito adapts to his wife's cats and slowly becomes a tried and true cat lover (it is autobiographical)
junjiitomanga.fandom.com/wiki/Ito_Junji%E2%80%99s_Cat_Diary
Last but certainly not least, if I ever feel that Japanese horror is just too intense for that particular day, there is a really beautiful and transfixing graphic novel here called Cats of the Louvre by Taiyo Matsumoto
This looks a little cutesy at first but it is really deep and introspective about a child and a cat that gets lost in a painting and about the cats that secretly live in Le Louvre and their caretaker. There is a lot of great cat personalities as well as that of a spider. Highly recommended!
www.viz.com/cats-of-the-louvre
So how about you? What are you reading during this pandemic?
**All photos are copyrighted**
Some of my art has taken temporary refuge at quimby's above the graffiti books, go have a look if you missed the show.
Harriet Quimby (1875 - 1912), the first licenced female pilot in America, photographed by Theodore C. Marceau in 1911. My colorization of an image in the Library of Congress archive. Sadly, Quimby lost her life only a year later in a flight accident:
"On July 1, 1912, she flew in the Third Annual Boston Aviation Meet at Squantum, Massachusetts. Although she had obtained her ACA certificate to be allowed to participate in ACA events, the Boston meet was an unsanctioned contest. Quimby flew out to Boston Light in Boston Harbor at about 3,000 feet, then returned and circled the airfield. William A.P. Willard, the organizer of the event and father of the aviator Charles Willard, was a passenger in her brand-new two-seat Bleriot monoplane. At an altitude of 1,000 feet (300 m) the aircraft unexpectedly pitched forward for reasons still unknown. Both Willard and Quimby were ejected from their seats and fell to their deaths, while the plane "glided down and lodged itself in the mud".
"Harriet Quimby was buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York. The following year her remains were moved to the Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. A cenotaph to Quimby, the Harriet Quimby Compass Rose Fountain, stands at Pierce Brothers/Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery in Burbank, Los Angeles, California. Located close to the cemetery's Portal of the Folded Wings, a shrine containing the ashes of aviation pioneers, the Quimby fountain's plaque reads":"Harriet Quimby became the first licensed female pilot in America on August 1, 1911. On April 16, 1912, she was the first woman to fly a plane across the English Channel. She pointed the direction for future women pilots including her friend, Matilde Moisant, buried at the Portal of the Folded Wings." "(Wikipedia)
introducing Beezus Quimby, or any combination of the two, after the Beverly Cleary "Ramona" books :)
One of the things about clearing somebody else's house out and having to go through decades of stuff, inspecting every single item, just in case, is that occasionally something fairly interesting pops up.
There was a big bag of postage stamps, so I had a look through it and found a few nice ones with famous people on.
I'm guessing with the advent of e-mail and stuff and the fact that the Post Office now seem to print labels rather than stick stamps on, that at least here in the UK the "art" on postage stamps will be in decline (although as always, I'm happy to be corrected.
Do kids still collect stamps? Personally, I'd find an X Box or PlayStation a bit more exciting nowadays.
These appealed:-
Harriet Quimby (USAirmail)
Red Cloud (USA)
Frank C Laubach (USA)
Paul Dudley White MD (USA)
Dorothy Hodgkin (UK)
Carl Lutz (Helvetia)
George Washington (?)
Father Flanagan (USA)
Humphrey Bogart x 3 (USA)
Harold Wagstaff (UK)
Paul Karrer (Helvetia)
Alfred Lord Tennyson (?) (UK)
Charles Babbage (UK)
Richard Nixon (USA)
Princess Di/ Princess Diana/ Diana Spencer/ The Princess of Wales/ Lady Di - etc etc (UK)
The Queen Mother (UK)
Marilyn Monroe (USA)
Mary Cassatt (USA)
Sir Henry Wood (UK)
Alfred Hitchcock (USA)
How cool would it be to appear on a postage stamp? I haven't appeared on one personally, but one of my photos was used by the UK Royal Mail on a sheet of stamps, celebrating Chinese New Year a while ago. One to tell the grandkids, eh?
Harriet Quimby (May 11, 1875 – July 1, 1912) was an early American aviator and a movie screenwriter. In 1911, she was awarded a U.S. pilot's certificate by the Aero Club of America, becoming the first woman to gain a pilot's license in the United States. In 1912, she became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. Although Quimby lived only to the age of thirty-seven, she had a major influence upon the role of women in aviation. (Wiki)