Sarah & the Swimmer

"Legend remains victorious in spite of history." Rosine, aka Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1925)

“To me, the sea is like a person - like a child that I've known a long time. It sounds crazy, I know, but when I swim in the sea I talk to it. I never feel alone when I'm out there.” Gertrude Ederle (1905-2003)

So, if I could find a way to upload a picture of Madame Bernhardt, you could see just how remarkable she looked, the great & complex lady who has a birthday today, or perhaps yesterday. Here, there are a bunch of images of "The Divine Sarah" at this link: http://www.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en&q=sarah%20bernhardt%20biography&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1046&bih=751

I noted yesterday that the great French actress came into the world at the time/apace intersection of October 1844/Paris. Back in the spring of 1977, a very hard time in my life [too many addresses, too many heartaches], so taken was I of photographs of her that I remember getting up in the middle of the night to do a painting of her. It was that painting that caught the attention of Phyllis Dove at a shopping center art show in North Kansas City. It was Phyllis who gave me the confidence to put in an application at Hallmark. Boy oh boy, I sure remember sitting across the street from the place, nothing more than bus fare in my pocket, no more self-esteem of a termite, wishing that I could work there. Ah well, all that's a long time ago. Sarah Bernhardt died in 1925, back when my old dad was three years old. Phyllis is gone, too, thanks to her murderer, never to know that I'd ever amount to anything.

In one of the many books I'd come to write & illustrate, I noted the life & accomplishments of Gertrude Ederle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Ederle That was in my book Remember the Ladies. http://www.amazon.com/Remember-Ladies-Great-American-Women/dp/0064438694/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1287861786&sr=1-1

Gertrude came into the world on the 23rd of October, 105 years ago today, in New York City. What must it have been like, NYC, 1905? Here - did you see the story about this on 60 Minutes the other evening? The extraordinary film made in San Francisco shortly before the earthquake? When TR was President, when Gertrude, away off on the other side of the continent was a tiny child? http://www.flixxy.com/san-francisco-1905-historical-footage.htm Likely many of the folks you'll see in this film never lived to know that Gertrude would be the very 1st woman to swim the English Channel...

22 Oct

Look at this! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/André-Jacques_Garnerin

You know, I've been making this a bit of a habit, checking to see who once celebrated this or that day as his or her birthday, thinking that on a day like this – cool, clouds gathering over trees shedding their leaves – some significant someone came into or departed from our world through the slot marked October 22. So what do I come across? the fact that a 28-yr-old Parisian, a former P.O.W., André-Jacques Garnerin accomplished something most brave and extraordinary. I never knew. If you've already clicked on the link above, you've read his story.

I think it's the birthday of Sarah Bernhardt, the glorious French actress. ... learned that - or think I learned that from the fabulous bio by Cornelia Otis Skinner. oh, shoot - it's not until tomorrow. I was so taken by the photos of her. Did a watercolor painting years ago of 'Mme. Sarah.. 'the Divine Bernhardt' ....'twas that painting that caught the attention of Phyllis Dove, a lady who befriended me... bless her, may she r.i.p.

I confess that my historical leanings lean upon images, impressions, books I've read, films I've seen, old episodes of Masterpiece Theatre. So I'm much taken w/ notions of American life in the first decades of the 1900s [picturesque, dramatic yet quaint from afar. damned scary & uncomfortable up close] & still a bit bereft that the century, its arc of events, is past... Warren Beatty's Reds: It was on this day [1887] that John Reed [poet, brave & passionate journalist, author of Ten Days That Shook the World.... the only American to be buried in the Kremlin, Moscow, after he died @ age 33 or thereabouts] ....was born. http://kirjasto.sci.fi/johnreed.htm The 1991 film Impromptu: glorious, funny, romantic.... Hugh Grant as Frederic Chopin; Judy Davis as George Sand. Julian Sands portrayed Franz Liszt, whose birthday it is today.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goeOUTRy2es

Am I rambling? Yes. Down to work.

“The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.” Florence Nightingale, who passed away a hundred years ago this past 13 Aug, @ the age of 90

So here I am, back from rolling Kansas, from a fine gaggle of elementary schools down 'round Augusta, just east of Wichita - a long stretch of lonesome road through beautiful country [nothing flat about it, if you don't count the turnpike] betwixt here and there. According to the wikibots, truly heroic, stubborn Ms. Nightingale took her brigade of nurses to the Crimea, to the dreadful war being fought there, on this day, October 21, 1854. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War

This link will take you to a very fine article about her, well worth the reading.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/REnightingale.htm

Bess

"A woman's place in public is to sit beside her husband, be silent, and be sure her hat is on straight." Elizabeth Wallace Truman

Off and away I'll be going in the next little while, southwest into the Free State for a bit o' school-visiting. On the way out of town I'll make a point to drive past the big white house on Delaware where once lived a good lady who died 28 years ago today. My mom saw her once, up at the Kroger's supermarket. How I wish I'd been with her that day. As a matter of fact, would that I could go to the store w/ my mom again. Anyway I'll be talking to young Kansans tomorrow about my books, especially Ghosts of the White House. I adored doing that book, researching, writing, drawing, painting, reading about the individuals who all lived in the President's House. Do, if you haven't, read William Seale's splendid, readable 2-vol. history of the mansion. I don't know that it's actually haunted. I've never seen a ghost and I don't know that I want to. But I used that device to show & tell about the U.S. Presidency, the men who took on the office. Here's what Bess had to say about the subject:

"Now about those ghosts. I'm sure they're here and I'm not half so alarmed at meeting up with any of them as I am at having to meet the live nuts I have to see every day. ...I won't lock my doors or bar them either if any of the old coots in the pictures out in the hall want to come out of their frames for a friendly chat."

I drove the long road down to Springfield, Missouri, and back again in the course of these last few days, passing road signs that spell out the life of me & mine. Humansville. We moved there the spring I was 8, to a rundown farm outside of town. I remember seeing the stars through a hole in the roof. The folks used to pile us into the car every once & a while for a trip to Dunnegan Springs or over to Osceola, just about exactly a 100 years after the town was sacked, burned down & out by Jim Lane's Kansas marauder,s in Sept. 1861. I think he killed himself some 5 years later. That's not all of his story by a long shot, but I'm not of a mind to go into what I've read of the notorious James Henry Lane.

My people have lived &/or traveled along that road more than 150 years. My great-great grandparents are buried a little ways west of the way, near Chilhowee. south of Warrensburg, where I went to college, where I got my heart busted a couple of times and learned not nearly enough. Alden & Sarah's grandson, Clarence was born in Post Oak, in the year that Franz Liszt died, the year in which the Statue of Liberty was dedicated. I knew him as Grandpap. Peppermints in his pocket. Not the best of dispositions, soured by a father, Alden Jr., who abandoned him & his mom, went off no one knows where.

Off I was visiting Paxton Elementary School in Platte City on the 14th, the 120th anniversary of the day that David & Ida Eisenhower welcomed their 3rd boybaby into the world, into the time/space intersection of Denison, Texas and 1890. They named him Dwight, but this kid with the sunny smile came to be known as Ike and, in time, well, you know. I swear, after all these years, talking with school children is THE best part of my job. Telling them about the making of books – the research, the writing, the rewriting [kids, those who aren't wicked hard on themselves, tend to let themselves off way too easy when it comes to revising their work when it's already done for crying out loud.] The drawing and the painting.

Oh, I draw for the little squirts, bless 'em, and try to make it all as vivid and fun as I possibly can, then away I go. Down to a literature festival in Springfield, MO State U. on the 15th, on the 129th birthday of P.G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse, bless him forever for the books he wrote. I've painted many a picture while listening to the incomparable Alexander Spencer read Right Ho, Jeeves and its sequel The Code of the Woosters. www.recordedbooks.com

Talking with children. Talking with other authors, wishing that I did not remember the words of Oscar Wilde, [b. 16 Oct 1854]: 'Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.' Alas, I do remember. His words do come to mind, but thank heavens they're not the only ones that do.) Good it was to be there. Good it was to get back onto the highway for home, on Saturday, yesterday [oh my goodness - I just checked, was reminded that on 16 Oct 1793 Marie A. was marched up the steps to the guillotine. How frightened & exhausted she must have been, she and a multitude of others there & then. Golly. Pauvre enfants.

Two more hours, by my clock, until this 17th of October is over once & for always. Happy birthday long gone movie stars, Rita Hayworth. Jean Arthur, Spring Byington & Montgomery Clift [did you see him opp. brilliant O. de H. in The Heiress, 1949? oh baby.}. Happy deathday, Frederic Chopin & Julia Ward Howe. So long. Thanks for everything and on we go, further & further away from them all, back up the road in time.

"Anyone who limits her vision to memories of yesterday is already dead."

So said Lillie Langtry, the Jersey Lily, the lovely actress who was born on the 13th of another October, that of 1853. I'll take her word for it and confine myself to saying that in my fairly immediate future, on the 14th of October, the 287th day of this here year, I'm heading off north to talk with bunches of little kids. About the time they're piling onto the yellow busses, I'll be fixing to drive south to Springfield, MO, for a literature festival on Friday.. More little squirts to talk to! 'bout books, of course, the writing and the drawing thereof. I intend to be exceedingly informative & amusing. I'd better pack my harmonica and check my stock of factoids - oh my gosh, I just did. 15th of October marks the birthday of one of my favorite authors ever, ever, ever: Hint: Would that I had Jeeves butlerizing these environs.

discovery

So, for the sake of a precious 3-day weekend, 'Columbus Day' was noted yesterday, a time for drawing sailing ships & reciting the old couplet featuring 'the ocean blue.' Folks might give a thought to a bull-headed, courageous navigator, 3 boatloads of sturdy seamen. Awe-fulness unleashed on the vasty wilds & all the people whose people had been living in the 'new world' since who knew when. long time anyway. Were it not for the fact that I need to go write other words than these I'd wax on a bit about a Edith Cavell, 29-year-old Englishwoman who was nursing, spying, doing whatever she knew to do to help the Allies defeat the 'Huns' in the Great War. That included helping some 200 soldiers get out of German-occupied Belgium. Caught, tried, convicted of treason, stood up in front of a firing squad, and on this day, 95 years ago, Nurse Cavell was shot, her soul dispatched into the next world, what you could call the New World as far as any of us mortals would know, never mind that the Blue Beyond had been there all along.