As a continuation of my previous post, I present this “comic” (that’s bande dessinée for the Francophiles out there) to capture the cafe society whirl from the perspective of a bored Comtesse.

ANOTHER NIGHT ANOTHER PARTY

Categories: Understanding The Olden Days
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If you’ve heard the term “cafe society” you may not know that it references a society and a time period, mostly in Europe, from about 1920 to 1960 and not just hanging out at coffee houses.

You may then  assume that cafe society was made up of writers and artists who hung out in Paris during this time period (you know, the ones we always hear about) and you would be somewhat correct – many of them moved in this circle, or at least on the periphery of it – but mostly this society was closed to people like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald and more open to writers like Truman Capote and Noel Coward. Why?

Because Capote and Coward devoted a fair amount of their time to being charming, going to the right parties and befriending the very wealthy in order to better their stations, which is a big part of what cafe society was all about.

But let’s start at the beginning.

“Cafe society” was first a term given to the “bright young things” who gathered in cafes and restaurants beginning in the late 19th century in places like Paris, New York and London. So that’s the “cafe” angle. They were not always part of the Establishment but rather people with money and therefore no need to work or artists who had attracted the attention of society for being brilliant, witty, charming or all of the above.

Cafe society was made up of sets of people – circles within circles, if you will. The main group was the noblesse oblige, also known as the “Windsor Set” after the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (aka Prince Edward and Wallis Simpson). These were people of means who went to each others’ dinners and balls, went yachting and traveling together and basically tried to keep from being bored by throwing parties, gossiping and having weekend stays at each others’ country houses.

A second group was comprised of socialites and society figures who served to set the tone. They weren’t necessarily the “big guns” in terms of birth or wealth but they had money and definitely went to the right places, hung out with the right people and sometimes made good marriages that bettered their station.

A third set was comprised of artists, writers, photographers, magazine editors, etc. who were very talented and so had caught the eye of the movers and shakers in the scene who often became their patrons, providing them with money, commissions and places to stay. These were people like Cecil Beaton, for a time Truman Capote (before he lost his footing), Jean Cocteau, Noel Coward, etc.

The fourth circle was made up of escorts, seducers, Don Juans and gigolos. It was not a bad thing, necessarily, to be an escort on the cafe scene. What this meant was that you were either the long-term lover of a married man or woman and therefore had your own station in life or that you were a favored, platonic friend who received benefits like an apartment or invitations to the right parties. Escorts sometimes started out as someone’s gigolo and then became a trusted adviser and friend. The origins and pedigrees of many of these people were often unknown – they simply came onto the scene and gave it everything they had.

It was maybe better to be an escort than to be in the fifth circle – fashion icon. These were people with no background or standing whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to be seen in the magazines and at society events. Think reality TV stars, if you want a comparison within today’s world. Kim Kardashian, Lauren Conrad, Paris Hilton and Heidi Montag would all fill this role.

Cafe society was the point in history when social classes did start to mix and one was more likely to find an eclectic mix of people at the parties but it was also marked by snobbery not often based on wealth. It was a time period and group of people often described as chic, romantic, tragic, snobby, cosmopolitan, superficial, louche (which is a word that doesn’t get used often enough in general) and depraved.

To understand cafe society, one has to understand the worldview of the very rich during this time period. Many of the top members of this society were people who inherited money and had never worked a single day of their lives. This group included Europeans, American and South Americans. Some of the people in cafe society were aristocrats with titles but many were what was called the nouveaux riches – people with new money and lots of it.

The nouveaux riches served a great purpose for the aristocracy – they pumped in much-needed cash from enterprises like pewter mines and sewing machine empires,  in exchange for noble names. Many American heiresses married princes and dukes for this express reason. Some socialites “worked their way up through successive nuptials until they managed to cast off all financial cares.”

How did one spend one’s time in cafe society? A lot of hours went into planning and attending balls. These balls were themed and often required elaborate costumes. Here is a listing of some of the balls from throughout the era:

The White Ball
The Sea Ball
Colonial Ball
Famous Paintings Ball
Tricentenary of Racine Ball
Kings & Queens Ball
Moon Over Water Ball
Proust Ball
Second Empire Ball
Oriental Ball
Goya Ball
Beistegui Ball (thrown by Charles de Beistegui in 1951 and considered to be the “ball of the century”)

Also taking up one’s time in cafe society: speed boating, car racing, hunting to hounds in England, skiing in Gstaad, partying on yachts and at country homes, partying in Paris, partying in North Africa, Italy and on the French Riviera. And don’t forget “hunting antiques” – interior decorating was a major past time and often something people got competitive over. Ball-of-the-century-thrower Charles de Beistegui, who sounds like a prick (he never “paid court” to any woman below the rank of duchess) devoted his time and money to putting himself in the spotlight and decorating. He was described as “the Don Juan of interior decorators.”

Married couples were united mainly by the convenience of mixing titles and fortunes and by their love of art and the social whirl. Often, that’s as deep as their relationships went – they both got excited about decorating the Paris mansion but when it came time for deep conversation or sex they turned to escorts and lovers, often of the same sex. A lot of people in marriages in this society were gay. And this wasn’t a shameful thing. Other people knew and didn’t really care except that they got to gossip about it. In a way, homosexual relationships alleviated boredom for those in the relationship and those who got to hear about it.

For example, Count Blunt was “bowled over by a footman named Cecil Everley and from then on divided his time between his wife and Everley, for whom he bought a New York apartment and a villa on the Cap d’Ail.” And the Duke of Kent was known for his love of cocaine, morphine and lovers of both sexes, including Noel Coward. Jean Cocteau, well-known as a homosexual, had an affair with Natalie Paley. Parisian grande dame Marie-Laure de Noilles had an steady stream of relationships with gay men after she caught her husband with his gymnastics trainer and decided to “live independently.”

One of the best examples of a truly Parisian menage a trois in which everyone – wife, husband, lover – was accommodated was Arturo Lopez-Willshaw, his wife (and cousin) Patricia Lopez-Huici and Alexis de Rede. Arturo had married Patricia because he wanted children but they failed to have any. He fell in love with Alexis in New York during World War II and installed him in the Hotel Lambert in Paris after the war. He then divided his time between Alexis and Patricia, who lived in a mansion in Neuilly.

When Arturo bought a yacht, he made sure that both Alexis and Patricia had cabins on board. When he died, the estate was divided between his lover and his wife, who had become friends, and Alexis worked to ensure the growth of the fortune by going into banking and setting up Artemis, an investment fund specializing in the purchase, exhibition and sale of fine art.

This doesn’t sound too bad.

However, not everyone was as determined as Alexis de Rede to leave something, a business, inheritance or art, behind. In fact, cafe society was marked by many people who simply wanted to spend all their money on a lavish lifestyle – the prime example being the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who led empty lives of snobbery, perfection and boredom surrounded by friends and hangers-on but who left no legacy, who did not contribute to anything or launch the careers of any fashion designers, artists, etc. For many people in this circle, their lives were their art and they treated their days and nights as performance, which was probably a lot of fun while it lasted.

C’est la vie!

Some interesting characters from cafe society:
Alexis de Rede
Barbara Hutton (dubbed “Poor Little Rich Girl”)
Mona Bismarck
Daisy Fellowes
Cristobal Balenciaga (Spanish couturier who dressed the finest ladies in the world)
Diana Vreeland (eventually editor in chief of Vogue)
Cecil Beaton
Emerald Cunard (and her daughter, Nancy)
Noel Coward (who didn’t this guy sleep with?)

Some hot cafe society reads (if you can get your hands on some of them):

The Glass of  Fashion by Cecil Beaton (and anything by Cecil Beaton, including his diaries)
Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon (known as Chips because his room mate at school was nicknamed “Fish”)
Poor Little Rich Girl: The Life and Legend of Barbara Hutton
Snob Spotter’s Guide - Philippe Jullian
Opium by Jean Cocteau
Cafe Society: Socialites, Patrons and Artists by Thierry Coudert (which helped a lot in this post!)
Riviera Cocktail by Edward Quinn

The Poor Rich One - Barbara Hutton

Categories: Understanding The Olden Days
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Luckily, he/she seems content to live in the backyard and doesn’t require a bed…

But he does like to sleep all day and doesn’t really appreciate noise from down below.

Categories: Look/See
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We know that President John Quincy Adams was one of the greatest diplomats our country has known, despite the fact that he was only a one-term president (that damn Andrew Jackson!). And how ’bout that Monroe Doctrine (which Adams put together while Secretary of State), huh? Take that, Europe!

But what do we know about his wife, Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams?

Well, how about this tidbit: she first met her future husband when she was four years old and he was 44. Just kidding!! He was 12 years old. She was living in France and he was visiting with his dad, the first Prez Adams. Louisa was American and British by birth and was born in London. She had six sisters and a brother and the family hung out in Europe during the American Revolution. Wikipedia explains this as “taking refuge” during the war but I read it as “hiding out.”

Originally, John Quincy was into one of Louisa’s sisters but, when that relationship proved to be a non-starter, he settled on Louisa. I wonder if he said, “Look, there are seven of you. One of you is going to marry me. Do you want to draw straws?”

Louisa was 22 when she married J.Q. Interestingly, John’s father, Prez Adams #1, initially objected to the marriage because he didn’t want his son marrying a foreigner. Because she lived in London. Wow. Yes, I can see how that would be off-putting, what with all the cultural barriers to overcome. But then John Sr. got over it. After Louisa’s parents moved back to the U.S. in 1797, her father was forced to declare bankruptcy and John Sr. was kind enough to appoint him  U.S. Director of Stamps.

Have you ever heard of such a bogus, “make work” position? Still, it’s a nice gesture.

“Oh, you need a job… Well, we don’t have any openings right now… Wait! Yes, yes, I will make you Director of Stamps. What does that mean? Well, you will direct stamps and their printing and distribution and you will select the ducks that will be featured on them although I forbid you to feature the Cayuga. I had a very unfortunate incident with a Cayuga.”

Louisa was, by all accounts, a delicate flower. She suffered from migraines, a weak constitution overall and frequent fainting spells. Granted, early life with her hubby was marked by a lot of moving as J.Q. took up various diplomatic posts in Russia, Ghent and London. I guess the Russian winters really sucked. Her best times were when J.Q. became Secretary of State and she entertained fairly often in her Washington D.C. drawing room, holding regular Tuesday evening music parties and frequent theater parties.

But by the time J.Q. took office, she was deep in depression. She preferred quiet evenings of reading and playing the harp instead of entertaining. She did do away with some of Liz Monroe’s White House exclusivity – she made it a rule that no one should be excluded from the White House drawing room whether they were friends or enemies of the administration.

Here is where The First Ladies Cook Book, brought to you by Fritos, and Wikipedia wildly diverge. The cook book claims she was a most gracious hostess and put on events that featured music, dancing, conversation and card playing. Wikipedia states: “As First Lady, she became reclusive and depressed. For a time, she regretted ever having married into the Adams family, the men of which she found cold and insensitive.”

Huh. I suspect that the people at Fritos weren’t too down with a depressed first lady who probably served cold cereal for dinner before going back upstairs to read more Jane Austen.

First Ladies Cook Book goes on to give three recipes for Louisa: Baked Codfish Pie, Clam Chowder and Chicken Croquettes. I surmise that the “nod to cod” was given because of her upbringing in London, where cod is quite popular.

Baked Codfish Pie

1 large codfish from your local fishmonger
stale bread, grated or bread crumbs, double the quantity of the fish
milk, heated
1/4 cup chopped parsley
grated nutmeg
pepper, to taste
1 tsp. mustard butter, melted (what in God’s name is mustard butter??)
pie crust dough (you’re on your own for the dough… this is the cook book’s subtle hint that you should go buy a frozen crust and be done with it!)

Soak the fish, boil it and take off the skin.

Wretch into the sink, take a hit of whiskey and keep going, you’re not through yet.

Pick the meat from the bones and mince it very fine. Take double the quantity of your fish of grated stale bread that you stayed up late to grate while watching Jimmy Fallon. Put it into a large bowl and pour over it as much fresh milk, boiling hot, as will wet it completely; add parsely, nutmeg, pepper and mustard, with as much melted butter as will make it sufficiently rich, the quantity of butter to be determined by that of the other ingredients.

That sounds like a riddle offered up by a ogre who lives under a bridge.

Beat all those together very well, add the minced fish, mix it all, cover the bottom of the baking dish with piecrust paste.

What? I though it was a piecrust dough and now somehow it’s a paste?

Pour the fish in, cover the top with more of the piecrust and bake in a hot oven (425) until well browned, about 45 minutes.

Enjoy!!

This is the sixth installment in the  First Ladies Cook! series. Visit this page for a listing of  First Ladies you’ve missed!

Categories: Cooking, First Ladies Cook, Icons
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The Buddha is serene even in the most difficult of circumstances:

Like, for example, being trapped in a crate. OK, so this truck has been in my neighborhood for months now with a beautiful Buddha statue crated up in it.

I’ve been walking past it since at least February. Originally I thought they must be waiting for spring so they can place it somewhere outside. Nope. Still a crated Buddha. At some point I would feel horrible about  leaving it in there so long but the Buddha doesn’t seem to mind. He sits calmly, patiently waiting. I’m sure he’s living in the moment, not all caught up in what the future may hold for him.

This morning I saw that there was a note stuck in the door handle of the truck (you can see it in the truck photo). It said, “Wanna sell your statue?” and then there was a phone number.

So I’m not the only one who has become impatient. Now the drama deepens as I wonder if the owner will, indeed, sell the statue. For how much? It’s very large. I would imagine it’s worth quite a bit. Where did they get it? When I took the pictures I stared up at the house. Nothing stirring at 9:30 in the morning, all the windows are covered with colorful sheets. Huh.

For some reason the truck makes me think of a Buddhist Sanford from the TV show Sanford & Son, driving around the neighborhood collecting junk in a very zen way. This makes me happy. Would he say, “Ooh, Lamont, this is the big one. It’s the big one but it’s OK. Pain is unavoidable but suffering is optional!”

If you don’t know anything about Sanford & Son, that joke is totally lost on you.

I think more people need the Buddha in their lives, caged or otherwise. I’ve had some weird run-ins with strangers this past week that have reminded me how lonely people are and how desperate they are to assert their worldview onto others so as to make everything OK.

The first encounter involved a man at a resale/antique shop. I was browsing around, as I’ve been known to do, and he was looking at the Coach bags the store sells. Now, whether these bags are really Coach is anyone’s guess – I have no interest in expensive purses, real or fake. But he was obsessed with them. He kept asking all the women in the store if women in general are still “into Coach.”

I wandered off to the back of the store but it wasn’t long before he caught up with me and asked me my opinion of Coach bags. I said I had no opinion. Then he started this litany:

“Look at all this crap in here. It’s sad. It’s really sad. Why even have a store like this? All this stuff should just be on eBay. You know what kind of people sell stuff at a store like this? Hoarders. You know what that is? I had a hoarder across the street from me, filled up his entire house and bought another one and filled that up. I called the city on him. I did. It’s just sad.”

In the middle of this oration, he let out a big fart and then continued talking, as if nothing unusual had happened. If that had been me, I would have at least had the presence of mind to flee in embarrassment but not this guy. He kept talking, telling me how everything in there was overpriced crap.

Now, I do wonder why I didn’t say to him, “And yet you’re here, aren’t you?”

Later, I wondered about why it was so important to this person to leave his home, seek out this store and then berate it to another customer who was just browsing around on a summer morning, for Christ’s sake. And I think it’s because people often want to spread their unhappiness around. They are also looking for some kind of recognition that, yes, the world does suck and it’s not just them. Except, yeah, it’s them. It’s each one of us who sets out to spread unhappiness to other people, like a plant trying to scatter it’s spores.

Encounter Number Two: Keith and I were walking home from a neighborhood cafe having a discussion about whether or not it is useful, in 2011, to learn Latin. As we were preparing to cross the street, a bus pulled up and a woman got off. She cross the street with us and then proceeded to walk, very slowly, ahead of us down the sidewalk. At some point I realized that she was eavesdropping on our conversation but I didn’t really mind. I would do that, too.

Then, when we had to turn off onto our street she stopped and said, “Excuse me but I’ve been listening to your conversation and I just wanted to say that Latin in very useful. It’s the root for most Western languages. My mother and I went to Europe and even though neither of us spoke another language, she was able to read and puzzle out a lot of things because she studied Latin.”

We were kind of unsure about whether we should stop walking and take up this debate. She was standing there looking at us so I said, “But it’s not conversational. That’s my point. Who can you talk to if you speak Latin?”

“Other people who speak Latin,” she said.

Does that not make my point? No one speaks Latin anymore! So if you go to Mexico or France, hooray that you can speak Latin but try asking for the bathroom. Would you stand there saying, in Latin, “Does anyone around here speak Latin?” I said as much to her and then turned around to keep walking and she stood on the street corner and shouted something at us.

Shouted at us! Over our conversation that she listened to without being invited in! And she was wearing Birkenstock sandals and carrying a bag from Michael’s craft store that probably contained yarn for some knitting project she would complete while listening to MPR. Only in South Minneapolis.

But she had to be right. Even if nothing was at stake, she had to shout some opinion at us. Did she think that we would come back and say, “You’re right. We were soooo wrong about Latin.”

***

Reading: Finished Everybody Was So Young by Amanda Vaill, a book about Sara and Gerald Murphy and their time in France in the 1920s and 30s; currently reading Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss, which is an amazing graphic novel. I highly recommend reading it – it’s interesting but also beautiful and tragic, particularly the artwork that goes along with the story. The coolest thing: last night after reading it in bed I put it down, turned out the light and realized that the cover art glows in the dark!

Watching: While suffering through a recent bout of stomach flu, I watched many strange things. A show on PBS about a guy who hunts spiders and, when he finds them, breaks into a cold sweat. I watched a crew build a stone patio for a building show and realized how many steps there are to building a stone patio. I watched a documentary about screenwriters that reminded me of how shitty it can be to be a working screenwriter but at the same time its better than an office job. Or so they say.

Anticipating: Despite a lay-off do to aforementioned stomach flu, I’m going to run my first 5K this Sunday as part of the Twin Cities Pride Festival. The Rainbow Run starts at the Stone Arch Bridge and runs along the Pride parade route to Loring Park. I’ve never run an organized anything before except for track when I was in junior high and that experience kinda sucked. I’m hoping this will be much better. I’ll be the slow one at the end of all the runners. Then, that night, Derailleur rocks the Aster Cafe with two sets!

Don't forget to breathe!

Categories: Wednesday Outlook
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Hello, my name is Lauren Bayhue. The Room of My Life is a project I’ve created while in psychoanalysis with the renowned Dr. Oliver Cuddles.  This is Dr. Cuddles:

The purpose of this undertaking is to troll my personal history through the spaces, or rooms, that have held my life in order to come to terms with my past so that I can, uh, embrace the future.

Here is The Rooms Of My Life, Part I, in case you missed it.

When I left off I was about six years old and we were living in a suburban house just outside Chicago. I had my own room but I spent a lot of time in the kitchen:

What I liked to do was sneak in there when my mom was in another part of the house and eat Oreos out of the clown cookie jar. I could easily polish off about 20 of them in an afternoon and then she would wonder where all the Oreos went. She never accused me of eating them all but she would wonder about it out loud while she made dinner. I never confessed. In fact, I had the audacity to then add them to the next grocery list.

I think this picture of the kitchen was taken on the summer afternoon we found out that Dad would be going to prison. Well, let me amend that. We found out that Dad had been arrested and would be going on trial for money laundering and extortion. The part about running a prostitution ring came out later. And the prison thing came about after he was found guilty. Anyway, I digress.

I remember that afternoon because my mother and my brothers, Kenneth and Royce and I were all standing around eating watermelon. It was a hot day and my brothers and I had just biked home from the community pool. And the watermelon was so good and cold and the juice was dripping down my chin when the doorbell rang.

And that was that.

Even though our suburban home just outside Chicago was not grand by any means (look at that kitchen!) after Dad went to the Big House we were forced to move. My mother claimed she could not handle three kids on her own with no income so my grandparents agreed to let my brothers live with them in Wisconsin. They didn’t like me all that much, which bothered me at the time.

My mother found a tiny apartment at the top of what used to be a grand mansion but had since been carved up into small apartments and studios. We had no air-conditioning and there were several wasp nests in the eaves. When we had our windows open, which we usually did so as not to suffocate, the wasps would fly in and settle on all our stuff. It was not unusual for me to wake up with the headboard of my bed covered in wasps.

It never occurred to my mother to demand that the owners spray the wasp nests. She was too busy working two jobs. I was often left with a young woman who lived in a studio apartment on the second floor. She smoked pot all day and had me occupy myself by cutting up fashion magazines while she watched TV.

Still, my mother made sure that one corner of our apartment served as my bedroom:

This was the photo she sent to my grandparents to assure them that we were doing just fine. I don’t think it ever looked like this again. What you can’t see is that the rest of the room is our living room and dining area. Once the roof started to leak in my mother’s room, she started sleeping with me in my bed. The nice thing about that was that she’d get rid of all the wasps before I woke up, especially the dead ones that had fallen from the headboard into my hair. Wasps die more often than you think.

The second summer my mother and I were on our own, I went for an extended trip to Wisconsin to see my brothers. I hadn’t seen them in a year. They shared a bedroom in my grandparents’ home. My grandmother bought them bunk beds, which made me insanely jealous:

I had to sleep on the floor, which made me cry. My grandmother said, “If you don’t like the floor, sleep in the chair,” meaning the hard-backed one you can see in the bottom left of the photo. I tried that one night but ended up falling on the floor anyway. My brother Royce tried to convince me that it wasn’t so bad to sleep on the floor because it was “blue, like the ocean,” and I could pretend to be sailing at night.  When he couldn’t sleep, he would lie in his bunk and move his sailboat across the “water” making an annoying sliding/creaking sound that kept me awake.

Neither one of my brothers would let me have their bunk or sleep with them. Kenneth said that sharing a bed would be breaking “the last taboo.” I have no idea what he was talking about. He was five years older than me and thought he knew everything.

Categories: Dr. Oliver Cuddles, Rooms Of My Life
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Recently, I’ve been reading a lot of books about the past and, in such books, tuberculosis (TB) often comes up. If you don’t understand what TB is, your enjoyment of books about the olden days might be diminished. I’ve decided to do my part to improve your chances of enjoying reading about the past by demystifying one of the most common old-timey diseases.

TB is a contagious bacterial infection that mainly involves the lungs, but may spread to other organs. You can get it by breathing in air droplets from a cough or sneeze from an infected person. So this is one of several reasons you don’t want someone to cough on you or sneeze into your face when, for example, you’re riding the bus.

When one contracts TB, there aren’t necessarily any symptoms. In fact, there may never be any. According to Wikipedia, “Most infections in humans result in an asymptomatic, latent infection, and about one in ten latent infections eventually progresses to active disease…”

If you’re one of the unlucky ones whose TB progresses, this is how it works – you’re living your life, worrying about what to make for dinner or if you’re going to ever get that raise at work when you develop a cough. Eventually, your cough will produce mucus or blood. Coughing up blood should get your attention, tipping you off to the fact that something is very wrong. You’ll also be tired, sweaty and lose weight effortlessly. Further along, it will be hard to breathe and there may be chest pain, wheezing, fluid around the lungs and crackling sounds when you breathe.

But what’s happening in your lungs? Well, the bacteria sets up shop in the lungs ( these are called tubercles) and your body sends out cells that form granulomas (kind of like lesions) around them to prevent them from spreading further. So if you get an x-ray, they will see these little masses in your lungs. What can happen is that these granulomas  can cause cell death in the tubercles and this stuff, called necrotic material, “has the texture of soft white cheese.” I believe this is the mucus-y stuff you’d be coughing up, and which earned TB the nickname of the White Plague. If the TB bacteria gets into your bloodstream, it can set up shop and form tubercles in other tissues. This seems like a major bummer.

Also, tissue that is ravaged by TB is replaced by scarring and cavities filled with that necrotic stuff – thus greatly reducing lung capacity. In the book I was just reading about the 1920s, a boy with TB had one of his lungs purposely collapsed by getting injections of gas (a thick needle was inserted under his arm and between his ribs!)  that surrounded and collapsed it in the hopes that immobilization of the lung would stop the spread of the disease.

It would be best, at this stage, if you enclosed yourself in your house or went off to live in a tent, so as to avoid infecting other people. Today, treatment involves being on a series of drugs to fight the bacteria. This is why TB was such a huge bummer before antibiotics – there were no drugs to take.

This is a great example of why it’s not such a great idea to romanticize the past. If you got TB in, say,  the 1920s, it was Welcome to Doomsville. “In 1815, one in four deaths in England was of consumption; by 1918 one in six deaths in France were still caused by TB. In the 20th century, tuberculosis killed an estimated 100 million people.” This is why it’s so prevalent in books about, or written in, the past. And it really was a death sentence. You’d go off to the sanitarium in some mountainous setting (they believed cool, thin air was best to slow the disease and “rest, sun and fresh air” were often the only treatments offered), sometimes for years, and lie in your “cure chair” and try to breathe. Even if one managed to recover, the bacteria would still be in one’s lungs, lurking, ready for a recurrence at the most inopportune time, like when one just met the love of one’s life and was going to get married and have a huge family and live on an estate.

Old-timey tip: When reading books about the past, you will often see reference to people dying of “consumption.” This is TB. For years, this confused me when I was reading. They often called TB “consumption” because sufferers wasted away, their bodies seemingly “consumed” by the disease. They also talked believed people became euphoric or experienced a burst of energy just before they died of consumption but this is likely one of those disease myths – women became more beautiful and men more creative. Ha!

So antibiotics have saved us, right? Well, yes and no. Antibiotics were great at first but, as so often happens, the TB bacteria are increasingly resistant to our drugs and have always required a cocktail of drugs. Wiki says, “The proportion of people who become sick with tuberculosis each year is stable or falling worldwide but, because of population growth, the absolute number of new cases is still increasing.” Granted, TB in the U.S. is pretty rare and there is a vaccine, although we don’t use it that much here due to this low rate of incidence.

One thing people can do to keep TB (and other communicable diseases) down is stop coughing and sneezing without covering their mouths – especially at home and work. It’s actually not that common to get TB from a stranger but more common to get it from someone you’re exposed to often. Anyway, one sneeze contains 40,000 droplets of spit… 40,000 little spit daggers loaded with bacteria! Is it really so hard to raise your hand or arm to your mouth to cover it while coughing or sneezing?

Also – stop spitting, people! I was in the park yesterday and some guy spit on the walking path as I walked by. Really? It’s so hard to swallow your spit? Does it hurt your throat? I’ve never understood this compulsion. The other afternoon, while I was enjoying the June weather on my front porch, my neighbor across the street came outside, sat down on his front steps and proceeded to hack and spit about 18 times, spraying his front lawn with mucus-y wads. This is what he needed to do on a gorgeous spring afternoon?

Want to do your part to stop TB? Stop being gross.

Categories: Understanding The Olden Days
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We’ve reached a milestone in First Ladies Cook! history. In 1818 the new White House opened, ushering in a new social era that in place and etiquette is somewhat similar to what we have today. This was during James Monroe’s time as prez (1817-1825) and his wife, Elizabeth, really had to step up her party game.

Elizabeth Kortright Monroe was a “belle” of New York City society and was only 17 when she married James (he was 27). She acquired more fanciness when she moved to France with her hubby when he became the United States Minister to France in 1794. While there, the Monroes became cozy with Napoleon and his family (I think I read that the Monroe’s daughter and Napoleon’s daughter went to school together and the parents bonded over raising money for the new playground) and later on they were invited to Napoleons’ coronation in Paris.

James went on to be the United States Minister to Great Britain and  the United States Minister to Spain. He was also the guy who went to France to negotiate the purchase of Louisiana.  Lest you think this was just for the state of Louisiana as we know it today, it was for 828,800 square miles of the United States. Kudos, James!

Unfortunately, when James became president his wife was constantly being compared to the outgoing Dolley Madison and found lacking. She didn’t have Dolley’s joie de vivre or true love of a party. According to The First Ladies Cook Book, brought to you by Fritos, as the presidential social duties grew more demanding and “unmanageable” during this time Elizabeth’s response was to make things more exclusive and, er, snotty. You know, keep the riff raff out.

Rather than follow in the footsteps of fun-loving Dolley, Elizabeth decided to be more selective of  who could come get their party on at the White House and she had John Quincy Adams, then the secretary of state, draw up a code of social etiquette for the House. Presumably, Adams worked on this when he wasn’t busy tinkering with the Monroe Doctrine.

I imagine Elizabeth was probably always talking up France and how the French did things, to the great annoyance of everyone around her. Things like:

“Well, when we were at Napoleon’s coronation, they had the most charming little cakes… You certainly can’t get anything like it here.”

“We went to a party once where they served snails and it was quite delicious. Not like these cod cakes…”

“Oh, the French never drink beer…”

“French women are naturally slender… And they don’t have horse teeth like the English.”

Dinner guests were probably always crossing their fingers and toes in the hope that they wouldn’t get the place card next to Liz at dinner and have to sit through another oration about how the French really know what to do with a truffle.

And The First Ladies Cook Book bears out my suspicion that Elizabeth was quite annoying in her Francophile ways – it very briefly mentions an account of a dinner party – “her refreshments and service displayed her foreign culture and French cooking prevailed, much to the disgust of many prominent officials.” Then it gives recipes for Gumbo and Mock Turtle Soup, two dishes that “may” have been among those chosen for such an occasion as General Lafayette’s historic visit from France in 1824 (Wouldn’t there be some official record of exactly what was served for such historic occasions? If not, maybe the White House should hire someone with a degree in Library Science to do some research.)

Mock Turtle Soup (although, let’s be honest, it was certainly not “mock” in 1824! They liked themselves some turtle!)

1 pint black beans
4 quarts cold water
1/2 pound of beef plus one shinbone (don’t you dare skip the shinbone!)
1/2 pound of salt pork
2 onions, chopped
2 carrots, grated
1 small red pepper pod (I have no idea what a pepper pod is)
salt (just pout it on!)
course black pepper to taste
1 wineglass port
3 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
12 thin slices of lemon

My stomach hurts just typing the list of ingredients but I’m going to dutifully report how to prepare this concoction.

Pick over beans, add water and soak overnight (pretend you can’t buy beans in a can to really amp up the 1824 fun!). Add meat, vegetables and seasonings and simmer about 4 to 5 hours. Remove meat. When cool, dice the beef and return to kettle. Puree soup through a colander (again, pretend you don’t have a blender), add port and reheat. ‘This will make at least 12 cups or plates. Serve with a slice of egg and a slice of lemon in each cup or plate.

And an extra bowl on the side to puke into.

Grade for Elizabeth’s recipes: F

Categories: Cooking, First Ladies Cook, Icons
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Here are a few of the people, things, ideas and places I’ve been thinking about lately. Have you been thinking about them too?

BOB ROSS

One morning this winter I discovered that my PBS station sometimes rebroadcasts The Joy of Painting early in the morning. I stopped to watch Bob Ross paint a falling-down fence in front of an old shack in the woods and that was that – I was hooked. There is a tradition among Tibetan Buddhists of recognizing reincarnated masters in children… I think they overlooked Bob Ross, with his sayings like “happy little accidents,” “happy clouds,” “happy trees” and his reminders to create your own happy little world, presumably both on canvas and off.

When I was a child, I would watch Bob paint and be entranced and calmed in a way that has never quite been duplicated. Watching his show has a similar effect as having someone run their fingers through your hair or as cleaning your ears with a Q-tip after being out on a long camping trip. It’s so satisfying that you sink into the feeling, listening to his voice and watching him paint his happy little clouds in a state of bliss.

Sadly, Bob died of lymphoma in 1995 at the age of 52 but his legacy lives on through the show, which airs in syndication, and through his company, Bob Ross Incorporated,  which sells how-to DVDs (some with names like “All Barns!” “All Lakes!” and “All Mountains!” or the Bob Ross DVD Legacy for $1,378.50), art supplies and t-shirts (you gotta check out the t-shirts, which you can find on this page). I think they need a shirt that says, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bob Ross.”

FRIENDSHIP BRACELETS

If you’re a woman who went to school in the U.S. you are probably well-familiar with friendship bracelets. Made from colorful embroidery floss knotted into various patterns, many of us wore 8 to 10 of them at one time when we were in junior high and high school. I didn’t wait for anyone to make one for me, (which was kind of the point behind them – your friend would make you one), and instead happily knotted away with the bracelet taped to my leg, tying knot after knot while watching shows like Cheers and The Cosby Show on TV or, if it was summer, Days of Our Lives.  I remember making one epic bracelet that was about 16-20 strings across, resulting in a cool, thick version that I wore until it rotted off my wrist.

Well, I don’t think friendship bracelets need to be only for the young ladies. A lot of designers apparently agree with me – I’ve seen some fancy ones that incorporate pieces of vintage jewelry, rhinestones, etc that sell for $75-100.  Also back on the scene is the preppy rope bracelet – when I was in 7th grade all the popular girls wore white rope bracelets and it was considered such an exclusive act that you couldn’t exactly go out and buy one yourself if you weren’t in the group.

But there’s nothing wrong about the good, old-fashioned friendship bracelet. One puts one on and leaves it on all summer long. Once you take a shower or a swim the threads shrink to form to your wrist and the only way to really get them off is to cut them. Maybe not perfect for the corporate drone but great for anyone allowed to show they have a personality.

If you want to be a cool pal, make one for a girlfriend this summer. Note: if you use real embroidery thread and not the kind for crafts, you can be sure that they are color-fast and won’t stain clothing or skin when they get wet!

Here are some tutorials to get you started if you’ve forgotten your knotting techniques: The Basics from Ben Franklin, making the Chevron pattern and Advanced patterns for all you smarty-pants.

UMBRELLAS

Maybe it’s because this was one of the wettest springs I can remember but recently I’ve become quite enamored of umbrellas. For years I lugged around an ugly navy blue and maroon one my mom gave me at some point after college. It was definitely sturdy but not pretty – it seemed like something a woman from the 1980s would have carried on her way to her job at Xerox or IBM. Then I bought a cheap, travel-sized one for a trip to Italy – it was raining when we touched down in Pisa and I got it out only to have it immediately break in the wind.

Since then I’ve been on the hunt for well-made, well-designed umbrellas. I bought two Marimekko umbrellas from the Minneapolis store Finn Style and I also acquired two amazing umbrellas from estate sales – one is green and blue plaid with the head of a Scottie dog for its handle (I long to find a similar one with a horse’s head for a handle) and the other is a perfectly preserved 1960s pink-and-red flowered one with a curved handle done in red leather with white stitching that appears to have never been used (it was carefully stored in its original plastic wrapping as well as wrapped in a cone of hardware store paper in the basement).

Keith loves to use the Scottie umbrella. He reports that you just can’t be in a bad mood when you’re holding on to the Scottie head while walking in the rain. I’ve found that spending money on tools and utilitarian objects that are well-designed often makes repetitive or tedious tasks a delight. For example, investing in an expensive German pizza cutter has made us happy in ways we never realized would matter. Same thing for a can opener. Being able to open a beautiful and/or well-made umbrella gives you the satisfaction of being prepared and stylish.

BIKE PATHS

There are some things that Minneapolis gets very right and one of them is bike paths. Bike paths (and lanes) are a more civilized way to ride in many cases (except when going around the lakes, which are a free-for-all of slow bikers, fast bikers, roller bladers, runners on the bike paths and strollers). The fact is, you can’t trust drivers to look out for you. They are too busy talking on their phones to come to a complete stop at stop signs. Or they see you coming but they don’t care and gun it so as not to have to wait for 20 seconds while you roll past. Or they are filled with rage over the fact that you’ve chosen to go somewhere by bike and happen to be on the same street as them.

This digression is my way of getting around to saying that Minneapolis (and St. Louis Park)  now has a bike path that can change your life. It used to be that the Cedar Lake commuter trail into downtown Minneapolis ended approximately at Liquor Lyle’s. You’d come huffing up the slight hill after exiting the trail only to be dumped across the street from the bar, observed by some of its afternoon patrons who came outside for a smoke. No longer!

A new section of the trail connects all the way to the Mississippi River via a tunnel under Target Field. It is now possible to bike from South Minneapolis all the way to the River largely on trails. We tried it on Saturday and were giddy with excitement – getting through downtown from the commuter trail used to be a maze of biking in traffic, taking quick jogs down one-ways going the wrong way and guesswork as to where you’d end up. Now the biggest challenge is aggressive bikers who refuse to say “On your left,” before they pass you because that’s a sign of weakness.

Try the ride on Saturdays and you can continue along the river to the Mill City Farmers Market for lunch before biking through the University’s campus and all the way to Minnehaha Park if you feel so inclined.

Here’s the article about it from the Star Tribune – the best part of it is the comments section where people complain, complain, complain about what an awful waste this is. I love it.

Categories: Zeitgeist
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Scanner difficulties, a trip to the dentist, general malaise and ugly hair all add up to a Shit Day. We all have them.

Compliments of Keith. He referred to this as his “e-card.”
More stuff tomorrow…

Categories: Uncategorized
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