Black & White and Read All Over Redux

21 October 2010 re: blog post Brenda Starr ballgown, 29 November 2007:

"Black and White and Read All Over" for Project Dollway.  Formal gown made using oversized elements.  This uses that crossword puzzle, pencil-eraser earrings, and an eraser purse.

Hopefully I have the font I want. My posts went far afield from dolls and play and tv ... in a way. I apologize for so much OT stuff -- important, more important than doll play and fashion and OT nonetheless -- is here that the doll posts are buried way in the back. Moving a bunch of pieces to blog at "The Way I See It."

Cool.  I got the font set up again.

Still taking pictures of my girls.  Here's Evelyn at last year's SunScreen Film Festival in Hermosa Beach:

Grievers At Rodney King Memorial: ‘The Nation Owes Him’

Grievers At Rodney King Memorial: ‘The Nation Owes Him’


I saw a peaceful gentle man the first time I  saw him, as he was leaving the hospital in a wheelchair, soft-spoken and unassuming, uninterested in lawsuits -- not the raging beast malcontent malingerer the reports had suggested he was: it was an eye- and mind-opener.
These last few years I was grateful for the opportunity to see the real man (via tv, on Celebrity Rehab) and to love him more -- still the soft-spoken, unassuming, gentle man upon whose shoulders rested the fragile relationships of race/culture, of authority vs. the individual, bearing the burden of the underlying resentments that reached critical mass, and L.A. exploded as it never had before, from Florence & Normandy to Beverly Hills, unimaginable scenes of groups run wild, palm trees burnt, the police chief letting it burn, reluctant to interfere.  A man who never wanted the spotlight on him was suddenly the public spokesperson for reason -- as he proved to be every time he spoke his piece/peace -- who most recently inspired and saddened us with the grace and humility he brought to all with whom he came in contact -- publicly once again, in rehab.  

“Some are born great; others have greatness thrust upon them.”

I am sorry to see the gentle giant pass from our lives, as he gave more than his all in bearing a greater burden than seemed humanly possible, as another individual who opened the closed door on the institutionalized abuses of power that we close the door on not out of a lack of concern but out of disbelief, an inability to comprehend or verbalize that which is before us because it does not mesh with the belief system we learn as citizens.  Trying to reconcile these two things will drive a person mad.  Remember who Rodney King really was and remember the viciousness of the beating he received while on the ground face down, covering his head with his hands and trying to crawl away from the blows.  

Always look and learn for yourself: read between the lines, use your eyes and senses, not what others tell you, in order to know a person, a situation, and their truths. Remember and hold fast Rodney’s gentle grace under a few individuals’ abuse of power that night and remember that he maintained that grace constantly, in the face of hardship and in spite of efforts to portray him as anything but.
Honor his memory by remembering to do that and remembering the pain in his voice and the spirit in which he uttered the words, “Can’t we all just get along?”  It’s not the joke some people have made of it; it’s the bottom line.

Rest in peace, Rodney.  I hope it’s good: you earned it.  23 August 2012

Black & White and Read All Over Redux

A year ago, I finally found a NY Times crossword collection with that puzzle in it, so I can remake the inner skirt of the Ball Gown with exactly the puzzle I had in mind: the one that had both presidential candidates winning the morning after the election: the spaces could accommodate either name and work the whole block of words.
21 October 2010 re: blog post click here to go to original post:Brenda Starr ballgown, 29 November 2007
--Ali

Where am I?

Holy moley! -- has some parallel universe opened up a leak somewhere?

Yesterday, the wife of Clarence Thomas, the wife who is a visable face of the Tea Party matrons, called Anita Hill's office at 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday to leave a message (at that date, time, and place she could hardly be expecting to have a conversation with Ms. (or is it Dr.?) Hill.  The content of the message was a cheery hi, how are ya?  You should apologize to my husband."

In her words, this was extending an Olive Branch.

As confused as the TeaPartiers are with facts, perhaps Mrs. Thomas confused a hickory stick with an olive branch?  She sees herself as the dove of peace, perhaps??

This weird feeling that a parallel universe has opened up is nothing new, and it began for me with the 1968 DNC, just watching it on tv, drawing, and taking it in.  Suddenly I saw scenes that looked like European WWII videos and kept asking my friend, "What is this? Where is this? What happened?" thinking it was a breaking newsflash from around the world.

Television followed with another surreal broadcast of toorahrah, "Watergate," asking then, "Well what all is this about anyway?" and then there was Martha Mitchell, Cassandra, reduced to banging on doors to make her voice heard while being labeled an alcoholic lunatic street person, this former wife of the Attorney General, John Mitchell.  Her cries went not only unheeded but mocked publicly; she continued to fight for what she knew was right, and what history has revealed to have been correct all along -- "history" being "the media" I suppose.

Then Ollie North and what was all that about, followed by an election and Ronald of Orange suddenly became president, more suddenly the hostages were released.  It was a HUGE arms trade, politically ensnared with the US in more ways than one might suspect -- ways that would appear to be delusional ravings, things so weird and far-fetched, that is, in contrast to what we have been educated to believe, that the truth, like Martha Mitchell's, seems an impossibility.

Those exist in the vaccuum created ten-twenty years earlier with the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, these swirling conspiracies.

Enter television again broadcasting another "What is this?  What am I seeing?  What is going on?" with the Clarence Thomas hearings, leaving us all puzzled for years, sweeping it behind us as another, "I don't knowww. . . ."

Memorial Obituaries McMahon, Bernice

Memorial Obituaries McMahon, Bernice

I've been devastated.  Losing my mother was losing my life: she was 92, which gives us many years to be two parts of the same thing. 

 Summer 2007

photo by Dyan Roldan

an angel sent to us

Donald Trump has a Dan Quayle Moment with Cindi Lauper

. . . and just as graciously as the boy who amended what had been the correct spelling of potato to "potatoe" for the boss, Ms Lauper corrected herself to say ". . . badly," after the Donald on last Sunday's Celebrity Apprentice stopped her midsentence to advise her to use the adverb badly to modify a sensory verb, in this case, feel,

so Big Red makes an appearance, on behalf of the Grammar Police in support of Ms. Lauper, to say,



Guys & Dolls: The stories of Damon Runyon

". . . so my dears, the lovely Ms. Lauper, in the boardroom, said 'I felt bad . . . ' about one or another event that affected people personally in that day's task. Without letting her finish, the Donald said, 'Badly. You felt badly.'
"'Mmmmm. Badly,' she said and continued, knowing well that her capacity for feeling is not in the least stunted, ill, or faulty, as the adverb badly suggests.  One can see badly, if one's vision is bad.  One can smell bad or badly, and they mean two different things.
". . . and so today, I, Big Red of the International Grammar police, have come to induct the Donald into the Hall of Fame at the Nathan Detroit School of Grammar."


This month's tv watching has deepened our love of Cindi Lauper and brought unexpected deep feelings of love for . . . wait for it . . .

Jessica Simpson

and

Tori Spelling

and

Kendra Wilkinson

it's all about as shocking to me as overcoming my aversion to Barbie dolls.  Now that I have written these last two names and "overcoming my aversion to Barbie" in almost the same breath, so to speak, I think I have something to worry about -- though I do love Jessica Simpson's big blonde beauty, and what is to love about all three of them is their gentle and thoughtful good natures.  Did that quality come from the same place that their need for surgical enhancements did?

Tori Spelling I had never seen until the short run of the Beverly Hills house with the smart-alec Latina housekeeper/babysitter: she has a gift for comedy.  The Tori-Dean shows I have seen are lovely: she is a wonderful mom with her children and is "giving them everything she didn't have as a child," which is usually a bad thing; for someone coming from a well-to-do Hollywood family and a mom who makes her feel worthless -- intentionally it seems -- it is a good thing: she is giving them love and attention (far more important than a toddler birthday party with many guests, 2 adults for every child, "all that and a pony").
Watching her carefully creating crafts to give as favors, her thoughtfulness to others, is a good picture of someone gone right.


Now, if only I could find the picture of Barbara Muñeca chatting with the Donald on a bench out back, bringing up the suggestion that he abandon investing in a power-building on the site of the Twin Towers and instead pull up those old Antonio Gaudí plans submitted at the same time the Twin Towers plans were, and thereby establish himself as more than a real estate investor: as a man who earned his wealth in real estate and used it to build another of the originally proposed plans for the site as an investor in cultural heritage, which will ultimately last longer than his wealth, notoriety, or celebrity.  We thought it was a brilliant Wizard of Oz solution.*

* a Wizard of Oz solution is ultimately simple and does what many make impossible by believing in impossibility: it is a win-win-win solution, one which makes everyone happy, or does good all around (i.e. it is a solution done well by virtue of doing good).