Remember This? March 1959 Family Circle

The March 1959 issue of  Everywoman's Family Circle is full of nostalgic photos and ads.

We are in the time period when turquoise was popular. RIT Dye's ad showed how last year's Mamie Pink coat could be dyed a great deep royal blue with the dress going from light to lovely seascape turquoise and greens.

Remember going to Grandmother's house for Easter dressed new fashions? Dark blue suit for Dad. Hat and heels for Mom. Suits for the kids. Pink and blue paint for Grandma's house?

Will ya' look at that diamond! Someone is getting married! 

All the girls in the office are wearing checks. Reminds me of someone. Peggy? That you?

Home sewers could make this orange three piece suit.

I wanted to be a cowgirl in '59. But I was years away from being a teen like these gals.

 Instead I was wearing roller skates like the ones below...and had  perpetually scabbed knees .

Everyone smoked. It was considered glamorous. Cough cough.

Kent Cigarettes sponsored one of my favorite TV shows. I figured its the brand I'd smoke when I grew up.

Hair styles from 1959:

What a hat!

 No bad breath with Ipana. You'll wonder where the yellow went. too.

Housewives LOVED their soft towels. So indicative of their contribution to society.

 A state-of-the-art laundry room was required to produce those soft towels.

Cleaning products

















Recipes dominate the magazine.

 Do I see....turquoise?

 Fast and easy was in. Thanks to JELL-O.

 Mustard on a pizza. No way.

 Remember Mr. Peanut? Before he did break-dancing and hip-hop?

International cooking was discovered. 

And if you ate too much there was 'diet food'.

Needlecraft and sewing was enjoyed.

Crayolas...my favorite childhood activity was coloring.

 During coffee break a gal could read a short story.

Parakeets were found in many homes. My grandmother had one.

 You could order a pink flamingo for your yard.

Here are some Lenten recipes from the magazine:

Tuna Tamale Pie

bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

1 1/2 c water

1/2 c yellow corn meal

1/2 cup cold water

1 can flaked tuna drained

1 can whole kernel corn drained

1 can tomato soup

1 cup diced celery

1 cup graded Cheddar cheese

1 small onion chopped

2-3 teaspoons chili powder

1. Heat 1 1/2 cups water to boiling; mix corn meal, salt and 1/2 cup cold water in cup; stir into boiling water; cook, stirring constantly, until thickened; cover; continue to cook over low heat for 10 minutes.
2. Mix tuna, corn, tomato soup, celery, 3/4 cup of the grated cheese, onion, and chili powder in medium-sized bowl.
3. Spread half of  the cooked corn meal in an 8-cup baking dish; pour in mixture; top with remaining corn meal; sprinkle remaining 1/4 cup cheese on top.
4. Bake in a moderate oven (350 degrees) for 1 hour, or until heated through and bubbly on top.

Tuna Burgers
Bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes. Serves 4.
1 can tuna, drained and flaked
1 cup cubed Swiss cheese
1/2 cup cooked potatoes
1/3 cup chopped celery
2 radishes thinly sliced
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 teaspoon grated onion
1/8 teaspoon curry powder
1/3 cup mayonnaise
4 round rolls, split and buttered
1. Combine tuna, Swiss cheese, potatoes, celery, radishes, parsley, onion, curry powder, and mayonnaise in bowl. Stir lightly until well mixed; divide evenly among buttered rolls; wrap each in aluminium foil.
2. Bake in 400 degree oven for 15 minutes or until heated through.

OverDrive's Big Library Read; What I Am Working On

I am reading OverDrive's Big Library Read, the 'first ever global eBook club". OverDrive is the service that allows me to borrow eBooks from my local library.

The book is Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary With the Bard by Laura Bates. Bates is a Shakespeare professor who went into Chicago's maximum security prisons to teach prisoners in solitary confinement. The book chronicles the journey of one prisoner and how Shakespeare changed his life.

To join in and get the eBook visit http://biglibraryread.com/
Read about the book on Huffington Post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/23/shakespeare-saved-my-life-excerpt-_n_3133831.html?

The Decorative Painting group I joined met yesterday and I came home with a metal planter with a bird's nest on it. I feel pretty good since I have not painted for several years. They are a nice group.

I finished one more border on Love Entwined-- I have to do another just like it still.

The Dream Lover by Elizabeth Berg: Imagining George Sand

George Sand narrates her life story in two time lines in The Dream Lover by Elizabeth Berg; one story line starts at the beginning of her life; the other starts when she leaves her husband for Paris where she reinvents herself.

The novel feels 19th c. in language--a time I feel quite at home in. George dominates the book, of course, as does her sensibility, and the reader will feel a knowledge of George. There are many pithy epigrams on life and love.

Berg allows other's viewpoints of George to play out in dialogue. When Franz and Arabella Liszt and George and her children are living together, Frantz warns George of her self-destructive proclivity to chose the wrong men, men who need her maternal care. George confuses being needed and being loved.

The real George Sand has been lost in the many tales and rumors that surround her. Did she have a sexual relationship with her friend the actress Maria Dorval? Berg offers us one liaison between them. Was she a good mother? Was her tough love regarding her daughter Solange justified? Were George's attitudes about sex and love philosophical, an emotional crutch, or a compulsion of need?

George Sand was born Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin in 1804. Her father married his mistress against his mother's will, but after her son's death she took her granddaughter under her care. She married badly, and left her family to live in Paris. She wore men's clothing to allow freedom to attend the theater for her reviews and smoked a cigar. To be judged equally to male writers she took the pen name of George Sand; George to sound more English and Sand for her lovers last name.
George was notorious for flaunting convention and living a Bohemian life. She wanted equality and freedom, the end of double standards. She had a romantic sensibility and wherever she found a kindred spirit she would fall in love. She was connected romantically with a series of (usually younger) writers, poets, and musicians including Frederick Chopin. At the same time George was very maternal and domestic, educating her children and making jam and needlework.

Balzac, Flaubert, and Victor Hugo were among her friends and literary admirers. Sand wrote several books a year, as well as plays, keeping to a strict writing regime. She was hugely successful in reputation and financially. Yet today we mostly think of her as a cross-dressing iconoclast who went through a lot of lovers.

The Dream Lover will appeal to readers interested in historical fiction, romance novels, and even to those of a literary bent--like myself--who want an introduction to a writer much neglected in our English speaking culture. I have obtained a Guttenberg copy of Indiana to learn more about George as a writer. I have not got far yet, but the novel starts with an charged scene between an emotionally frail wife and her tyrannical brute of a husband who goes out to shot a trespasser. There was a reason why George was an immediate success!

To put George into perspective, 1832 saw the publication of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Roger Malvern's Funeral, Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra,and Tennyson's Lady of Shalott. Honore Balzac published four novels to George Sands' (and Walter Scott's) two, but Edward Bulwar-Lytton, Benjamin Disraeli, Alexander Pushkin published only one novel. Not bad for a single mother of two!

In 1832 Charles Darwin was voyaging on the HMS Beagle; Henry Schoolcraft found the source of the Mississippi River; Andrew Jackson became President; Sir Walter Scott died; and Louisa May Alcott and Lewis Carroll were born.

George has been called the first professional female writer. Not everyone will feel comfortable with her, but one has to be impressed with her achievements.

I requested this book because I had read Elizabeth Berg's early novels and recalled liking them. I received the free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.


The Dream Lover
Elizabeth Berg
Random House
Publication Date: March 31, 2015
$28.00 hardbbound
ISBN:9780812993158

Advance praise for The Dream Lover
“Elizabeth Berg is both tender and unflinching as she explores the heart of the enigmatic writer George Sand. Her lyrical prose caused me to pause and savor the words. With an eloquence of the heart worthy of her subject, Elizabeth Berg gives us a very human portrait of a nineteenth-century legend who dared to live and speak freely.”—Nancy Horan

John James Audubon Imagined: Creation by Katherine Gouvier

John James Audubon (1785-1851) kept written records documenting his work and life yet his time exploring Labrador in 1833 is missing. Something in his letters and diaries made his granddaughter excise the pages. In her novel Creation, Katherine Govier invites the reader to imagine what occurred during these lost months.

My story is a mixture of fact and fiction.  “The gap”  in history is what interests me. That’s where the imagination can find root. I was very proud of those first two words — Just Suppose. Katherine Govier

As the book progresses the author continues to remind the reader that they are on an imagined journey.

"He did not write these words.
"Or at least we do not know that he did. He may have done, but we do not know. If he did, the letter is gone. Saved, perhaps for years by Maria. Collected on her death or before by Audubon's zealous, curious granddaughter. Lost in the Civil War, or burned, or soaked in a flood of tears, or vinegar. 
"This is what happens to letters, especially those with secrets in them.
"Time is a vessel. The past is the stories we fill it with."

Born Jean Jacques Rabin in what is now Haiti, he was the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and plantation owner and his domestic servant Jeanne Rabine. After Jeanne's death he was raised by his father's mulatto mistress along with half-siblings. In 1788 he was sent to his father's legal wife in Nantes, France. He was formally adopted and became Jean-Jacques Foguere Audubon. In 1803 his family wanted him to escape service in the Napoleonic Wars and sent him to America where his family owned property outside of Philadelphia. In America he adopted the name John James Audubon. He had a life long fascination with birds.

After a stint in jail for bankruptcy he hoped to claim fame and financial security by creating the first comprehensive book on Birds of America, printed on 'elephant' sheets so the birds could be shown full size. He left his wife Lucy and their son Victor to handle the logistics while he and son John pursued the birds.

Audubon noted the decline of the birds, preyed upon by men who thought that nature provided an endless bounty. The Great Auk was extinct eleven years after he painted one.

When I was in Labrador, many of the fishermen assured me that the "Penguin," as they name this bird, breeds on a low rocky island to the south-east of Newfoundland, where they destroy great numbers of the young for bait; but as this intelligence came to me when the season was too far advanced, I had no opportunity of ascertaining its accuracy. In Newfoundland, however, I received similar information from several individuals. An old gunner residing on Chelsea Beach, near Boston, told me that he well remembered the time when the Penguins were plentiful about Nahant and some other islands in the bay.

The Esquimaux Curlew was last seen in 1964. On July 29,1833 Audubon witnessed a great flock that was driven inland by a dense fog. They were hunted, considered great delicacies.

Audubon's journey up the bleak coast of Labrador parallels that of British ship captain Henry Bayfield whose assignment is to chart the dangerous and unforgiving coast. The men become friends, their talk both philosophical and personal revealing they are opposites. Audubon has left a wife but also loves the woman who paints the flowers for his birds. Bayfield is a lone traveler with no family ties.

The novel does not have a suspenseful climax, a shattering 'ah-hah' moment, there is no strum and drang. And yet my interest did not flag. The writing is lovely. We learn history and about the production of the artwork. Audubon is complex, part trickster and part genius.

Audubon comes to understand that the act of creating his masterwork necessitates complicity in the destruction of the very birds he loves. But he can do no other. He was a willing slave to his work.

To see Audubon's birds go to https://www.audubon.org/birds-of-america
For an interview with the author go to http://www.govier.com/bookclubs/bookclubs-creation.htm

Creation was a New York Times Notable book of 2003.

Creation: A Novel by Katherine Gouvier
Published by The Overlook Press
2002
ISBN-10: 0679311815
ISBN-13: 978-0679311812

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Play Time in the Quilt Room

This weekend I wanted to 'play'. I had all those new vintage linen pieces and I wanted to see what I could do with them. I pulled out different linens and coordinated them with fabrics and embellishments. This was my first one completed.

The lacy white circular 'linen' was my starting point. I wanted something in the center and decided on a counted cross stitch butterfly made by my mother-in-law.

 I pulled out the yellow fabric with orange butterflies, and then found the orange for an outer border.

 I had been given a stash of cut-out pieces of embroidered linen pieces by a dealer and decided to use these little florals. Two of the five pieces were stained, so I arranged the three good ones.

I had machine stitched the central butterfly motif and covered the edges with green beads.

I had fun making this little quilt. I can't wait to get back into my sewing room and play some more!

How to Make a Modern Quilt

Modern: of, relating to, or characteristic of the present or the immediate past: contemporary. Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Lucky Spool's Essential Guide to Modern Quilt Making, From Color to Quilting: 10 Workshops by your Favorite Teachers, including 16 Patterns, Complied by Susanne Woods is designed to aid the intermediate quilt maker to learn new skills for their toolbox.

The local quilt shop is home to the local Modern Quilt Guild. I have not done any 'modern' quilting myself. I hand quilt, hand appliqué, and my quilts themes look to the past and not to the present. I am far from 'modern.' I guess I'm archaic! But an old dog can learn new tricks.

I was a relative later comer to quilting, starting in 1991. I have seen a lot of changes: rotary cutting, Batiks and Reproduction fabrics, to machines that cut shapes and websites that print custom designed fabric.

Modern Quilts are hugely different from what has been going on for years. They seem to have little in common with traditional quilts. There is the simplicity, the basic geometric shapes, the sophisticated use of negative space, the dense machine quilting. Solid fabrics and improvisational piecing stand in contrast to the floral prints and high standards of precise piecing. These new quilts are like 1960s art with its lines or geometric shapes of color on a white background. As Mid-Century Modern is all the rage with young people, it seems right that the quilt world responds with minimalist designs.

 The workshops presented in the book include:

• Principles of Color by Kari Vojtechovsky
• Working with Solids by Alissa Haight Carlton
• Working with Prints by Dan Rouse
• Improvisational Patchwork by Denyse Schmidt
• The Alternative Grid by Jaquie Gering
• Circles and Curves by Cheryl Arkison
• Paper Piecing by Penny Layman
• Large-Scale Piecing by Heather Jones
• Modern Quilting by Angela Walters
• A Study of Modern Quilts by Heather Grant

Many of these workshops will be useful to quilters of any style. For instance, the principles of color has twelve pages full of color illustrations to explain the basis of color theory. A pattern for a 57 1/2 x 57 1/2" quilt includes cutting diagram and visuals for piecing the blocks, assembling, and finishing the quilt.

"Working with Solids" considers solids, cross weaves, and textured fabrics, the importance of value, composition and line, improvisational piecing, use of negative space, featuring prints, straight-line quilting, and a pattern for a 60" x 72" quilt. 

The workshop on machine quilting offers detailed step-by-step illustrations. It made me think that even I could do it! We are told that machine quilting is like driving a car; one must always look ahead of where you are. 

There are a total of 16 patterns included.

The last section is a virtual quilt show of 50 modern quilts, something to inspire every quilter. Several of the quilts or quilters I recognized as recent show winners. 

I was impressed by the book. I thank NetGalley and the publisher for the free ebook in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

To learn more about Modern Quilting see:

https://themodernquiltguild.wordpress.com

http://quiltconwest.com

lucky Spool's Essential Guide to Modern Quiltmaking

The Taunton Press, Inc.

ISBN: 9781940655000

$28.95 paperback

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Rivera and Kahol in Detroit

This weekend the Detroit Institute of Arts opens their special exhibit on Diego Rivera and Freda Kahol. The focus is on their time in Detroit between July 1832 and March 1933 when Mexican born Diego Rivera (1886-1957) created his masterpiece mural Detroit Industry. As members of the museum we were able to attend a preview for the show which opens March 15 and runs through July 12, 2015. The exhibit includes cartoons of the murals, videos, and art by both Rivera and Kahol.

Edsel B. Ford, son of Henry Ford and Ford heir, and William Valentiner, director of the DIA, commissioned Rivera for the project. Rivera was paid $25,000.

 Edsel B. Ford, who donated $10,000, and William Valentiner, Director of the DIA, who commissioned the project

Rivera spent months studying the Detroit factories and labs. He then put in 16 hour days painting. He lost 100 pounds. Rivera Court is impressive. How the artist managed to do the work in eight months is unthinkable. (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/09/05/mura-s05.html)

Ford was amazed that Rivera caught all the details and complexity of the Rouge River Plant and assembly lines.

 "Edsel Ford was carried away by the accurate rendering of machinery in motion and by the clearness of the composition, which was not confused by the great number of workmen represented, each occupied with his assigned job. The function of the machinery was so well understood that when engineers looked at the finished murals they found each part accurately designed…"

http://www.diego-rivera-foundation.org/The-Assembly-of-an-Automobile,-1932-large.html

Rivera  arrived in Detroit in the middle of the Depression. He was a Marxist and his work elevates the role of the worker. When Rivera completed the mural in 1933 some were outraged by the murals and wanted them whitewashed. A Detroit News editorial called it coarse, vulgar, and "un-American." It is now a National Historic Landmark.

"I admire Rivera's spirit. I really believe he was trying to express his ideal of the spirit of Detroit." Edsel Ford

10,000 people came to see the murals. People were amazed and proud to see their work captured in art. The common man saved Rivera's work.

Dear Master,Please, give me the permission to express my grateful thanks for the greatness of your feeling and understanding in all your great work, this, your own creation as I stand here and see it with my old eyes that labored for 45 years for others with no other recognition in this corrupt society than just to be called a ‘hand.’Therefore useful workers of the world, for the first time in the history of mankind, shall honor you as the first great artist of understanding, and with your great help the workers of the world will take their place. Wishing you a healthy, joyful life.Respectfully, Louis Gluck. For 45 years a wood carver.( http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/09/05/mura-s05.html)

See details about Rivera Court here.

During this time Freda Kahol was painting, developing a new style, and suffered a miscarriage.

Rivera and Kahol, http://www.dia.org/calendar/exhibition.aspx?id=4608&iid=

The exhibit begins with her pencil sketch of that depicts a bus accident that left her badly injured when she was only 18 years old. She was in a full body cast for months. Later in the exhibit we see her painting that depicted her post-miscarriage experience at Henry Ford Hospital. She also had polio as a child and perhaps was born with spina bifida. It was moving to know what she had endured. Rivera changed a portion of the mural from depicting farming to depicting a healthy fetus in the womb.

 Kahol and Rivera had a stormy and complex relationship which is only hinted at.

I enjoyed seeing the artist's paintings not related to their time in Detroit. There is a beautiful painting of Rivera's daughter from his first marriage; she holds a bronze mirror.

We also enjoyed seeing Make A Joyful Noise, Renaissance Art and Music at Florence Cathedral which runs through May 167, 2015. Included were illuminated, over-sized choral books that took six years to create and reliefs from the singing gallery created by Luca della Robbia.

See Rivera's paintings at http://www.diego-rivera-foundation.org/the-complete-works.html