skip to main |
skip to sidebar
MEMO
BOOK
1920
NAT. FEINBERG
Fine Custom Tailoring
1184 Russell Street
DETROIT, MICH.
What messages does this Memo Book 1920 deliver to the 21st century? We still have memo books and calendars and we are looking into remaking urban spaces and walking cities. Seems as if we could benefit by returning to custom tailoring and local manufacturing.
A neighbor gave me this little artifact after the death of one of her relatives, presumably the original owner, about ten years ago. There are two names listed in the addresses section, in pencil:
"Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and decision difficult." Hippocrates (ca. 460 B.C.-377 B.C.)
Or, as Gore Vidal has compressed it, "Life is short, but the art is long."
Some things have persisted through a lifetime, and remain there seemingly as always. Cuba. Israel-Palestine, North Korea/South Korea. James Bond. The Rolling Stones. Bob Dylan. Space shots. Civil rights, human rights, gender issues. China.
Some things have morphed. Vietnam. Ireland/Northern Ireland. Germany. The Cold War. The Soviet Union. Eastern Europe. The Balkans.
And the ball keeps spinning. Some plots thicken, some plots thin. Cuba is changing. Korea will, either in a violent spasm or in some unexpected manner. Palestine will become a nation.
In my lifetime, though these things seem slow, they have changed, even as the population has increased, half again as big in the USA alone (though half as small in Detroit and, probably, New Orleans). South America has changed, Africa has changed, and both continents will change at a quicker pace. All of Africa, not just North Africa, perhaps following the Arab Spring, may begin throwing off dictators. Who knows? What will happen in Mexico? How will the drug wars end? How about Iran, India and Pakistan? And so on. I remain as curious as a cat about all of it, but with vegan meals added.
Today's Rune: Wholeness.
Belle Isle sojourn, Detroit, in the early 1930s. Love is a many-splendored thing. I wonder what Frida Kahlo is thinking as she fiercely eyes an apparently napping Diego Rivera.
From the artists of the Great Depression to the artists of the Great Recession, a salute!
Today's Rune: Wholeness.
If you're feeling time move too fast and want to slow things down for a while, watching this will do the trick: Krzysztof Kieślowski's La double vie de Véronique / Podwójne życie Weroniki / The Double Life of Véronique (1991).
The lush, gorgeous and reflective cinematography by Sławomir Idziak is worth the whole shebang. The film's dazzling consideration of color and light, translucent and transparent surfaces, distortion and shadow is central to the story of two women who could be identical twins, one Polish (Weroniki), the other French (Véronique). So is the ethereal soundtrack, puppetry and various memorable inside/outside settings. All done at a s-l-o-w pace.
If identical twins are separated at birth, how might their lives be similar and how will they be different? And more eerily, why (and how) are certain people (not just twins) deeply connected in ways we can't really understand?
Today's Rune: The Self.
Venus, as painted by Sandro Botticelli seven to ten years before Colombo/Columbus made it to the "New World," could step into this new world of 2011 and walk down a Manhattan sidewalk with ease. Despite hundreds of changes in style and fashion through the intervening years, why is that? And how can an image created more than 500 years ago retain its potency?
Botticelli's La nascita di Venere/The Birth of Venus looks almost like Pop Art, as many others, including artists (see Andy Warhol's remake), have noticed for quite a little while.
Here's a snippet from Roger Scruton's observations in Beauty: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2011, page 127): "Botticelli's Venus is, from an anatomical point of view, a mishapen caricature, held together by no skeletal structure or muscular tension, a helpless apendage to the face that looks out so wistfully, not at the viewer but past him -- and yet who cares?"
The original is in Florence -- I've seen her with my own eyes.
Today's Rune: Partnership.
International mail, interstate mail, local mail: I love it all when it's personal. Technology is forcing change, however. The basic idea -- inscribed paper sealed in a stamped envelope -- has persisted for centuries. The digital age, though, makes other means of communication easier, faster and cheaper.
From time to time over the years, I've polled various people as to approximately how many letters they've sent or received in a given time slot vs. using alternatives like text messaging, email, phone calls, tweets, etc. Since about the year 2000, most people I've asked have switched heavily to almost exclusively digital formats. Written letters permit a bit more reflection, but they take longer to get there.
As long as there still is an international postal service, why not utilize it? Surely there are people who would enjoy a letter from time to time?
Another thing to consider: university manuscript collections and archives may treasure some of your letters, even choice ones from the relatively near past. I've already got one set being catalogued in North Carolina. Institutional archives are a good place to send letters because they have professionals who can preserve fragile items far better than most individuals. A backup method is to scan at least samples of letters and notes, or do both. That's my stamp for the day . . .
P.S. I haven't lived at the above address since the mid-1990s, but if you'd like to send old school mail via a current postal address, contact me by (yes, you guessed it) email and I'll give it to you.
Today's Rune: Defense.
I. Greetings from 1911 to 2011! Have you made great advances in the way we live? Are the zeppelins and heavier-than-air-ships still zipping around the skies? Was the RMS Titanic a hit? Are the masses and classes treated equally now? Can women vote, too? Has humanity become more enlightened, if not perfected? Has peace broken out all over?
II. Greetings from 2011 to 2111! Has climate change forced people underground like moles? Have we replanted the world like Johnny Appleseed gone global? How's that Martian colony coming along? Did we make it without a Third World War? Has the world population exceeded eleven billion and counting? Has veganism taken hold as the preferred diet? Do bees still exist in the wild?
Today's Rune: Journey.
