Pam's Tall Tales

My Own Private Grand National

Yesterday I took part in a horse race that held all the excitement of Grand Nationals from my childhood. Back in those days, my mother, egged on of course by her father, not to mention her Irish Toohey genes, would scan the newspaper for the odds and place half a crown on a promising horse. Then we would gather around the telly and watch with baited breath as the horses thundered round the racetrack and scream when they fell at Beecher’s Brook.

So, on the eve of this years Grand National, I decided to celebrate the old tradition by placing a bet on an Ebay horse. I’ve been looking for a nice picture to sit over the fireplace of our little  gatehouse and wanting something in keeping with its era I researched the famous 19C animal painters.If I were rich I’d pick one by J.F. Herring and sons or failing that George Stubbs Lincolnshire Ox would fit the bill because it makes me laugh.

Lincolnshire Ox. George Stubbs. Walker Art Gallery

But, as I was brought up to be thrifty, (we never bet more than half a crown), I found instead a 5-inch watercolor horse on Ebay called Ginger. 

I let Ginger walk around the paddock of my indecision for a week or two, eyed his form and checked out his fetlocks with the magnification tool. In the last half hour I decided I would place a bid.  I was under no illusion about the JFH signature in the corner of the picture - this was clearly a Red Herring - certainly not a J.F. Herring - nevertheless I decided a small flutter was in order because regardless of his pedigree I liked his looks. I waited until the the race was in home stretch before entering -  there had been a bit of a skirmish between two automatic bidders who had whipped and jockeyed each other along for a lap or two. I placed my bid ten minutes before the bell - all seemed well - one of the two previous contestants had fallen at a hurdle and I had a comfortable lead on the other who also seemed to have tired of the race. I was ten seconds from the finishing line and feeling the flush of imminent victory when a phantom bidder appeared and raced past.  It was neck and neck towards the finishing line.  Frantically I slapped down another ten dollars - but too late! I was pipped at the post and Ginger left the paddock with a different owner. 

Ginger on Ebay

Milwaukee Art Gallery

A few years ago, when the funding first got tough, on a day when I was feeling downtrodden, an email flew into my inbox like an angel on the wing. A colleague had written to tell me of an endowed chair.  A few days later I got the call - come out and give us a seminar, stay a few days and see how you feel about it. My hosts  were  very gracious.  They spoke of the difficulties in recruiting candidates to the mid-west from east coast institutions.  As one faculty member there put it, they have to counter "The Stockholm Syndrome that keeps scientists from leaving institutions that are money-driven hollow vestiges of their former glorious academic past".  Milwaukee perhaps had a harder time as  for many it remains linked to Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer, and Fonzie (Henry Winkler), the star of the TV series, Happy Days .  

I found Milwaukee to be an interesting town, a proud industrial behemoth built on "beers and gears", home to the producers of Miller's Ale and lawn mowers - not unlike the Manchester area where I grew up.  The  local bratwurst, heavy architecture, and stocky populace are all products of the bavarian diaspora that came here to farm at the turn of the century.  It also has a lively counter culture, a veritable "east village-like" demi-monde centered around Brady Street. Its Historic Third Ward could compete with Soho for fashionable lofts and coffee shops and its central canal and new waterfront development aspire to an Amsterdam mode of living.  

Three other things were  persuasive. First the ladies.  The position was to be endowed by friends of the deceased and it was clear that the decision rested firmly with the women. One, who was herself unwell,  placed her hand on my arm in a way  in a profound and inspiring way that  conveyed - we trust and support you - do your best.  Then there were the "lady riders".  Milwaukee is  the home of Harley Davidson, and the Lady Riders, as my hosts explained, were an highly effective fund-raising foundation of motor cyclists.   The third was the Milwaukee Art Gallery. It houses a superb collection of expressionist German art but the building itself is truly spectacular. I could have stood all day in the soothing serenity of the dappled light that poured in through its oval window that opens on to the blue expanse of Lake Michigan.  The Trustees had great insight to persuade the Spanish architect, Calatrava, to design their outside public space. He created  a structure, somewhere between a sail and whales fin, that opens in a spectacular undulating motion reminiscent of a ray swimming. It is as awe-inspiring as the Sydney Opera House and a testiment both to  the architect and the the burgher work ethic that strove to make possible such a truly magnificent building.

On my last visit the airport televisions blared stories of the endless foreclosures sweeping across the nation.  Midwest airlines, who would have flown me back and forth cheaply to New York, with the dogs for free, went under. Endowments sank countrywide pitching academia into a brutal meltdown. So in the end I didnt go, but I save a soft spot for Milwaukee, its strong supportive women and its beautiful symbol of civic pride by "the shining big-sea water".

 

Winslow Homer's Yorkshire Fisherwomen

My friend, Victoria Lochhead, recently made an interesting post on some very beautiful  Sutcliff photographs from the 1880's of Whitby fisherwomen.  These photographs instantly reminded me of some unusual paintings, made around the same time by one of my favorite artists, Winslow Homer. Homer was a self-taught illustrator.  He is well known in the USA for his  watercolors of New England seascapes, as well as for two other series of paintings portraying the intense sunlight and ambience of the carribean or the coolness of the forest in scenes of hunting and fishing.  I was initially attracted to him as a painter by the latter paintings because they capture the wild essence of the Adirondacks where we frequently spend our summers, camping on the islands of Lake George off Bolton's landing. Homer is not well known in the UK.  However, he spent three years there, living two houses away from the lifeboat rescue station at Cullercoats, a fishing village on the opposite side of the bay from Whitby. During this time he painted many pictures of the fisherwomen. They are atypical of most of his paintings but he obviously greatly admired and captured their strength and endurance. His biography and complete works can be found at here. 

 

A-Fisher-Girl-on-Beach-(Sketch-for-illustration-of-'The-Incoming-Tide')

 

 

Fisherwives

 

 

Perils-of-the-Sea

 

 

The-Fog-Horn

 

 

Waiting-for-the-Return-of-the-Fishing-Fleet

 

Postcard from Charleston

The New York winter kept us in feather coats until April.  Needing warmth, we booked an early flight and stepped off the plane two hours later into a glorious Charleston, South Carolina spring morning. After crab cake and grits at “High Cotton” we strolled down Church St., the most romantic road in the USA, to photograph the Hugenot church and neighboring pretty pink houses glistening in the sun like iced wedding cakes. 

French Hugenot Church, Charleston, SC

We caught a rip-roaring matinee of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” at the Dock St. Theatre, America’s first theatre that opened 1736 and is now housed in the former Planter’s Hotel, built in 1809. The sun was still shining when the theatre let out so we walked along the sea wall to get our bearings and capture the “Rainbow Row” of seafarers houses lining the Battery.  The Battery was built to protect Charleston from Spanish marauders and was also the site where Colonel William Rhett hung pirates at low tide cutting loose their bodies at high tide as fodder for the sharks and alligators. 

Pink House Church St, Charleston, SC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rainbow Row, Charleston SC

Charleston was founded in 1670 and one of the earliest British colonies run by the Lord Proprietors.  Unlike colonies to the North, Charleston had no religious mandate and was populated mainly by British colonials from Barbados. By 1775 is was the fourth largest city in British America after Philadelphia, New York and Boston and its prosperity was based on mercantile trading of indigo and “Carolina Gold” rice harvested from the surrounding plantations.  Following the example of their namesake, Charles II, Charlestonians indulged in a hedonistic lifestyle.  The wealthy planters built enormous, beautiful houses. Many of these old neighborhoods remain intact today thanks to the activities of the Historic Charleston Foundation that holds a “Festival of Houses and Gardens” every April. We signed up for three of their tours. These proved notable not only for the magnificense of the houses but also for the Southern hospitality and amazing hats and bow-ties worn by their lively octogenarian volunteers and guides, who were decked out for the occasion in full Sunday best. 

Charleston house with Wisteria Fence

Charleston is a city of Caribbean pastel houses, balustraded balconies wreathed in confederate jasmine, wrought iron gated secret gardens, palmettos, live oak and crepe myrtle trees swaying with Spanish moss and walls draped in wisteria. It is also a town of good food, pedicabs, a burgeoning art scene and the Spoleto Music Festival. Charleston is good for the soul, charming and dripping in history at every turn of the road.

House with green wrought iron railings

Charleston survived a Great Fire (1740), an earthquake (1868) and two wars of secession.  It won the first battle of the Revolution but fell three years later under bombardment from British canon located on the neighboring islands.  The British told General Moultrie he had “made a gallant defense but that a great many rascals had given them information”.  The British Colonel “Bloody Tarleton” and Sir Henry Clinton then proceeded to illegally overrule the conditions of surrender, demanding oaths of loyalty to the crown from the citizenry and hanging as traitors those who refused.  All this is documented in moving paintings and letters held by the South Carolina Historical Society that occupies the “Fireproof Building” adjacent to federal, state, city and church buildings that make up the “Four Corners of the Law”.

Four Corners of Law, Charleston

eventually the brutality of the British was their undoing. After the war ended Charleston ladies feted George Washington. His statue stands in the park next to the Fireproof building along with tributes to General Beauregard, whose forces fired the first shots on Fort Sumter that started the American Civil War. Fort Sumter stands two miles out from the battery and guards the bay. We took a chilly boat trip and realized 10 minutes out to sea that nothing would be left to see except the Indigo South Carolina flag fluttering in the breeze – it comprises the palmetto and crescent – that commemorate the spongy palmetto stockade and crescent armor that saved General Moultrie from British bombardment.

Mr. Williams Jnr House

Broad Street divided Charleston historically and continues to do so socially to this day. On Monday, we toured the downtown historical district. Here the great fire of 1740 had lead to a preference for brick. Charleston lacks stone, therefore fake stone façade was etched into the stucco and the streets were paved with ships ballast. Houses were packed together with their sides facing the street and balconies, supported by Greek columns of different style on each floor, were erected to catch the sea breeze. On Tuesday, we walked the more northern “suburban” Wentworth, Hassall and Charlotte St. neighborhoods, where the planters moved out to build their larger mansions and town houses.  On Wednesday, we drove to the neighboring Magnolia and Middleton rice plantations for a wine tasting and dinner.  The gardens were a riot of azaleas and Spanish moss. Rice paddies along the river, creeks and reflecting ponds, were replete with alligators. 

Magnolia Plantation

On Thursday we took the Palmetto Carriage Company’s mule ride – I had major misgivings about such an obviously touristy trip – but it was recomended by many locals turned out to be the highlight of the holiday. The guide was extremely knowledgeable and we wished we had taken it earlier in the week. In fact, I was so impressed I was ready to sign up for the pirate re-enactment walking tour run by his best friend in full swash-buckling drag. On Friday, we took one last stroll through the historic district, cruised the art shops, then snuggled into the sofas nestled on the rooftop of Henry’s Bar and ate our final bowl of divine she-crab soup.  It was a great six days.  As we drove to the airport the heavens opened in the wake of an Alabama tornado. By the time we reached New York we needed our feather coats.  

A Frock Too Far

 

Women in the garden - Monet

 

This week was a hypoglycemic whirl. We began our Lenten diet a little late- driven by middle-aged expanding waistlines rather than religious aspiration. The problem with diets is that the planning required to carry them out makes you food-obsessed. On Saturday we stocked the fridge with enough low glycemic vegetables and fish to feed he five thousand. By noon on Sunday, ravenous from a long cold dog walk, we decided to distract ourselves from hunger pangs by going to the Met.  As always, we got lost in Roman antiquities and while backtracking through Polynesian facemasks became subliminally drawn towards the courtyard café and there came to ruin. Clearly, there’s no going back from a mushroom vol-au-vent appetizer. Realizing this fact, we ditched the diet, polished off a lamb ragu with pint of ale, and, caving completely, chased it down with warm chocolate and pear tart.  There was just enough time left after all that to stagger off and take in the new exhibition on “Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity”.

 

The Parisienne - Manet

 

The pictures were a fabulous frenzy of white frocks, bustles and stripes, taffetas and corsets, crinolines and kid gloves. All immortalized in paint by the Impressionists endless quest for modernity. For the most part, the Manet’s and Monet’s painted their mistresses adorned in the latest swag.  

 

The lady in Blue - Corot

 

Two things struck me. The first was the sheer beauty of the clothes and the artistry of the seamstresses. Even the most hip among the viewing audience looked drab and badly dressed by comparison.  The second was the psychological depth of the paintings by Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot. When viewed next to those of their male peers, they provided an intriguing counterpoise.  The men’s paintings were beautiful and had far more immediate appeal but were essentially decorative.  Those painted by the women were devoid of the coquette and their relationship to the painter took center stage.

 

In the loge - Mary Cassatt

 

 

The sisters - Berthe Morisot

 

 

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Berthe Morisot

'Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Salford was Never this Shiny in Lowry’s Day

There is nothing as lovely as a long train ride in a jet-lagged dreamy state.  As we set off from St. Denys I drifted along enjoying the morning sunshine and the pleasant lilting voice of my fellow Scottish traveller. Someone once told me that the degree to which people reveal their thoughts is inversely proportional to the length of their train journey.  It is true, by the time she alighted in Wolverhampton I knew her entire life history. As we emerged into the lovely greenness of Staffordshire the train gained speed. Crossing the border to Cheshire, suddenly I caught a glint -- the white water tower -- there it was, perched like a Victorian ornament on top of a wedding cake -- Congleton! I strained to see but we were through in a rattle of rail. On we sped along the Pennines to Manchester.

I first visited Manchester as a teenager. In my memory it is slaked with industrial grime peppered with the excitement of an adventure into the big wide world.  I can honestly say I have never seen the sun shine on Manchester and this trip was no exception.  One personal reason for attending the meeting was to see if all that Manchester rain would wash away my homesickness. By day three brisk tea was required to face the grey mornings, by day four I was nearly cured.  But, Manchester is like Philadelphia, a dour industrial city with an imposing past, and when you come from there you always feel the need to defend it, to extol its burgher work ethic, tout its cosmopolitan King Cotton past, and…. when pressed by skeptics…. well…. at least its not Birmingham.  The meeting itself was a success -- held in the The Palace Hotel and with receptions in Manchester Town Hall and other grand Victorian buildings of industrial weightiness.  I saw a lot of central Manchester, largely because I am “geographically challenged” when it comes to maps and equally dazed by verbal directions.  Lost at every turn, I wandered back to the hotel in entirely the wrong direction via Piccadilly Gardens where drunken boys spilled out of bars and pale damp Mancunian girls, braving the bracing winds with nothing but a fake tan on their bare legs, brought back amusing memories of my own teenage attempts to effect the impossible.  Thank god for signs to the station or I might have ended up in Bury. One evening we took a collegial outing to another of Manchester's pleasures, East Z East, a fantastic indian restaurant, that had the added advantage of being at the base of my IBIS hotel on Princess Street, so at least on this night I did not get lost.

The conference over, I arranged to meet up with Big Bro and jumped aboard the tram for Salford Quays. Whoever picked the name “Media City” for the last stop on the line should be shot.  But setting that aside, Salford was a revelation.  In my memory, Salford was to Manchester what Queens is to Manhattan, a wasteland that, as the cab barrels along from JFK to the city, you close your eyes and think, “why have I come back to this”.  But Salford is transfigured! The economic upswing of the previous decade has transformed it into a kind of modern Amsterdam with beautiful well-designed glass buildings dipping their toes into the canals and waterways.

Salford Quays

Bro was waiting on the platform in the lashing rain with my sister-in-law, who is universally acknowledged to be “The Only Sane Family Member”. (God knows what made her marry into our line, particularly after becoming acquainted, in the biblical sense, with Bro’s feet).  Bro was wearing something tweedy that looked like it couldn’t make up its mind whether to be a trilby, a deerstalker or a cowboy hat.  Hats are a fetish in our family. At the height of the Cold War, my father, ever the rebel embarrassed us by wearing a Breshnev number.  Bro claims it is male baldness in a biting wind and not foppery that leads to this bizarre behavior. I am not convinced.  Arguing against this hypothesis our Dear Demented Sister, (DDS), who has voluminous hair, does it too. Her husband, “The Soul of Patience” has also fallen under our viral influence and I must confess that one Christmas I talked the “Long Suffering Husband” into buying me a hat that Ghenghis Khan would have been proud of.

Still it cannot be denied that a hat, any hat, however odd, was needed as we beat through the rain to the Lowry Museum. The Lowry was, when said and done, chock full of wonderful Lowry’s and, descending from a dynasty of Mersey Flatmen, I of course found myself particularly drawn to one of a large black barge beached in the mud of the Manchester Ship Canal. We viewed them all and then spent an equal amount of time in the museum shop buying ballast for the suitcase in the form of hefty books. Bro plied us with Gin and Tonics, and treated us to a wonderful dinner in the museum restaurant after which, merry and fed, we dashed off to see  Loves Labors lost done in a broad Lancashire accent.

Next day, as the rain continued to slash down, I settled into Bro’s sofa and opened my laptop.  There revealed in the browsing history, lay the full irrational extent of the homesickness -- all those listings of wind swept stone cottages in Wildboarclough. Bro was amused and I could see he was already weighing the prospect of a few holidays up there with some long hikes with a good pub at the end.  The Only Sane Family Member tactfully pointed out that inability to drive and advancing age might prove incompatible with life atop the peak district hills around Buxton where snow regularly cuts off the roads in winter.  The rain put paid to plans for a drive in the direction of “The Cat and Fiddle” to scout out “cottages I want to buy when I am rich”.  So instead we set off for Quarry Bank Mill to learn how our ancestors, The Mather’s, wove cotton. Of course this also meant the added delight of drinking pots of brisk tea and enjoying generous portions of cake -- good old National Trust.