The little treasure box

It's very easy to get excited when I find something handmade.

Something unique and unusual, such as this wood and metal, oval treasure box which I found at a yard sale back in Wisconsin.

At least that's what I call it.

Even though it contains no gold doubloons or sparkling gems - in fact it’s empty -  it's still a treasure. An odd little box with it’s odd, little lock.

Whimsical and mysterious.

Playful, but a wee bit serious.

And altogether marvelous.

Light of Day

The following short story was inspired by the hauntingly beautiful winter scene pictured. I found this small, 4 x 6, unsigned, pen and ink on paper at a barn sale in Wisconsin many years ago. It remains one of my very favorite pieces.

Katie keeps the meager fire burning in the small cottage at the edge of the woods, watching her mother twist and turn. Hearing her quietly moan.

Looking around the cabin, she’s desperate for something to do - some way to be useful. But all’s been done in the last two days since the contractions began. So all there is to do is be there when her mother calls, and wait.

Motionless at the kitchen window, she watches the rising sun slowly define the intricate silhouettes of the barren trees behind the barn. 

What will the new light bring?

But she’s exhausted and the light is dim.

Wiping away the frost and the fog with the apron she’s been wringing in her small hands, Katie watches her father through the kitchen window as he prepares the wagon to fetch the midwife from town. 

Hitching the horses in the pale light of the lantern, she marvels at his ease and compassion. Patting each on theirs rumps and their necks, and rubbing their broad, long noses, he gently rouses his team to their unexpected task.

Clouds of breath rise from their nostrils and disappear into the cold and still of the mid-winter’s morning, as he moves swiftly around the massive beasts, laying the harness as he has hunderds of times before. With bridles slung over each shoulder, he warms both metal bits beneath his thick coat before putting it in their mouths; and for his daily thoughtfulness, each horse lowers his high, heavy head toward him when he holds out their bridle.

Katie smiles.

Until another moan comes from behind and she’s at the side of the bed before the contraction ends and her mom can see again. Gently wiping her brow with the apron, she squeezes tight when her mother grabs hold of her hand and clutches it to her chest.

Smiling again when her mother turns toward her.

Opening her eyes to her daughter, no pain can blur the struggle she sees in her young heart and old hands. She wants to hold her, to hug her tight and tell her everything will be well, but another bolt of pain seizes her thoughts and intents, and she releases her daughter’s hand, clutching the bedsheets instead.

Twice the dawn has come and gone and still the little one is all turned around and stubborn to leave. But I’m stubborn too, she repeats as she squeezes. And the midwife will be here soon.

Pacing the room, Katie hears a horse whiny and looks through the glass and the ice to see the foggy figure of her father climb to his seat, lift his collar against the cold, and call to his team. Running out the door, to the edge of the yard, she watches her father disappear into the expanding light. 

The horses’ hooves and wagon wheels crush the thin, icy layer that’s formed on top of yesterday’s heavy, wet snowfall, and the sounds of the departing wagon cut through the silence, the winter and the morning, like a tear in the universe.

His universe.

His happy home.

“Click-click,” he urges his horses, while urging himself to peace; to steady his breathing and steady their pace. 

All will be fine. She’s a strong woman. Far stronger than me.

“And what would she say of this mood beyond hope?” he calls to his team, resting his eyes on the road up ahead, as the dim and grey of the dawning, winter day becomes brighter and whiter with the strengthening light.

Beulah Jewell Folk Draft Horse

Beulah Jewell, found handwritten on business card of Haskell Jewell, Sr., Woodcarver, taped to bottom.

When I find a piece of homemade folk art like this Oh So Happy draft horse, I rejoice.

I rejoice in the fact that it is as unique as the individual who created it. 

As unique as their thoughts, their lives, their dreams, and the view from their window.

 

The Power of the Press

a Chicago Sun-Times printing plate of Jacob Burck's editorial cartoon, "Impeachment", 1973-74

I found these two Chicago Sun-Times printing plates (c. early 1970s) at a local thrift just last year and knew almost immediately there had to be a story behind them. I soon discovered that both Nixon-era political cartoons were created by painter, sculptor and nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist, Jacob Burck. 

Burck, who began to create political cartoons in the late 1920s, not only influenced a generation of cartoonists with his signature style of using ink brushes, grease pencils and lithograph crayons, he also won a Pulitzer Prize in 1941 for his moving cartoon for the Chicago Daily News of a little girl kneeling bedside in prayer, in a bombed building in war-torn Europe, entitled  "If I Should Die Before I Wake." 

An outspoken critic of social injustices, politicians and pretenders, the Polish-born artist would challenge newspaper audiences from coast to coast, for over 40 years. 

In my research, I read that Nixon was a great admirer of Burck's art and collected it. However, the impeachment scene above and the one which follows, depicting life at Nixon's "West Coast White House" in San Clemente, California - where money apparently grows on (palm) trees - suggests the artist did not reciprocate.

In finding historical relics such as these, I am constantly reminded of how much our pasts, presents and futures are eternally connected by opposing forces - good vs. evil, have vs. have nots, us vs. them; the old world and ways vs. the new.

A recent quote I read by "The Onion" sums it up beautifully: 

"History sighs. Repeats itself."

Chicago Sun-Times printing plate of Jacob Burck's editorial cartoon lampooning Nixon, early 1970s.

A Comfortable Allegiance

"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

~as originally written by Francis Bellamy, a Chrisitian Socialist Minister, in 1892

Frozen in Time

I'm immediately drawn to certain objects. Especially ones which lead me to ask a lot of questions about how it came to be - or not, such as the unfinished hook rug pictured. Still on its frame, still pinned and eternally poised to be completed, I saw it in a local thrift and was compelled to give it purpose - if just a moment's notice by a contemporary passerby.

After all, many years ago (I'm guessing 1940s-50s) someone sat before this stretch of burlap, carefully sketching all the pretty, pink peonies and bright, green leaves, and when the oval pattern was complete, she painstakingly pulled her short, looped yarn through the loosely woven fabric time and time and time again. Slowly and skillfully raising the hook flowers from their burlap garden bed.

I took a class in hook rug making years ago with my cousin, Mary, at Old World Wisconsin, an outdoor living history museum in Eagle, near where we used to live. So when I came upon this relic from some relative's attic, I well knew it was begun by someone quite accomplished with a latch hook.

So why did she stop? 

Heartache? 

Illness? 

Death?

I guess it doesn't really matter.

To me, it's still something to admire - stains and all - because all those years ago, someone sat down in front of this canvas and started to make something beautiful.

1920s My Whoopee Autograph/Photo Book

Following decades of cultural austerity and industrial growth, as well as the atrocities and devastation of a World War, the 1920s were ripe for change. The younger generations wanted no more of their parents' prim and proper path. So, they threw off their ancestral layers of modesty and decency, raised their hemlines and hairlines, listened to jazz, drank, danced and whooped it up as if they knew exactly what lean days lay ahead.  

And Hollywood led the way for change, bringing larger than life characters to screen: vamps, tramps, sheiks, dukes and dandies, allowing moviegoers an escape from their everyday lives, as well as a template for how to look and behave in this new, young, free and easy era.

All they had to was pay the price of admission, find a seat, and off they travelled to ages past, faraway lands and futuristic worlds, to mansions of the rich and the trenches of soldiers.

Famed and familiar storybooks suddenly came to life with swashbucklers and maidens, villains and queens; and extravagant follies once reserved for the main stages of big cities, soon flashed and glistened each week at the new cinema down main street; filling the screen with color and movement, song and dance, with pretty girls dressed in very little making human kaleidoscopes and handsome men in top hats and tails, swooning and crooning. Filling the senses of the young and the old with visions the likes of which most had only imagined before.

Audiences gleefully hopped on board the Hollywood train and headed off each week to exotic destinations with erotic characters, imagining themselves in the arms of their favorite movie star - be it Clara Bow, or Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Ronald Coleman, or the incomparable Rudolph Valentino. 

And when it wasn't adventure and romance the film audience was seeking, Hollywood obliged. After all, who couldn't laugh at a good ol' pie in the face, or high speed, Keystone Cop chase?

What better little object to reflect this golden era in American Culture and filmmaking than My Little Whoopee Book?